Bogey Man
by kydasam
Summary: When a room you have visited every day of your life takes on a feeling of malevolence when night falls, it's comforting to light a candle. Sometimes, tho, that's the worst thing you can do. COMPLETE
1. Default Chapter

Rating: PG13  
Pairing: Carl/Gabriel, not a slash pairing, but a deep friendship  
Series/Sequel: A new story

**Summary: The stage is set to visit Tintern Abbey**

Warning: Aspersions against the Church of Van Helsing's time (which I feel are merited); some violent concepts though not graphic

Disclaimer: I don't own anything (sniff), but I do like to play

**Feedback**: For all of you who followed the past stories, I hope that you find this story equally as interesting if not more so! Your reviews and suggestions are, as always, deeply appreciated!

* * *

_When you are alone in a room that you have visited every day of your life, that space occasionally takes on a different air when the light is dim and the shadows grow long. A feeling may come over you then of unease; it's a bone-deep assurance that you are being watched and sized up by malevolence. It doesn't happen often—just sometimes. In a way, the infrequency makes it almost harder to rationalize away. On those nights, when the rich visceral night cloaks you in an embrace both suffocating and terrifying, it's a relief to light a candle and allow the light to chase away the darkness Light brings a soothing feeling, a safety with it. It proves that your fear and your gooseflesh are just figments of your imagination. It almost always works._

_Of course, sometimes, it proves just the opposite. And then nighttime terrors take a back seat to the master of terror—the monsters that are real in the light._

_Brother Dominic ran with slapping footfalls through the dappled corridors that he had walked through every day of his life since he was a boy. He cursed his footfalls in his mind but didn't spare breath to vocalize his blaspheming nor his fear. He needed all of his strength to run as fast as he could to get away from what followed him, what pressed all about him. Fear of the Darkness was a childish thing; when he was a boy he had insisted on a night candle but he'd quickly outgrown the need. Now he longed for it, prayed for any sliver of light that didn't move and twist. And he fought that need, fighting it back like a mortal enemy. That was the key—light wouldn't help him now. It was his enemy._

_His breath came in ragged gasping sobs, but he was almost to the great wooden door that would lead out to the open courtyard and safety. So close, so very close to safety now…. He flung himself at the door, scrabbling at the cold iron handle, wrenching at it as his hoarse breath tore at his chest and set his throat on fire. Tears ran down his face as he felt the ancient latch release allowing the door to creak open. He dragged it open, forcing it back, and gloried in the bright blue moonlight that flooded through it for several heart aching seconds before he realized he had betrayed himself. In the pale light, no brighter than a single candle, he shuddered so hard he could hear his teeth clatter as the light revealed what the darkness had hidden._

_The hysterical screams and sobs carried on for sometime before the great wooden door closed, sealing the sound and the darkness within._

* * *

**Bogey Man—Chapter 1**

Cardinal Jinette sat quietly, thoughtfully pensive in the large red leather chair behind his magnificent desk. The richly appointed room with its thick soft carpets and its superb furnishings were fitting backdrops for the shelves of leather-bound books that graced an entire wall. Everything was dusted, cleaned, oiled, and maintained to perfection. Everything was in its place and accounted for. Of course, such perfection always has a price.

The Cardinal now acknowledged he was paying such a price in his solitary ruminations. No one wanted to spend a great deal of time in this room, nor with the man that sat at the desk. He could hardly blame them, he didn't want to spend any time here either and he often found his own company far too sober. Unfortunately, his sobriety was a necessary evil given his position as head of an Order that had to acknowledge and battle what others called the bogey men and hysterical conjurations of weak minds. Normally, the disbelief of the general population in such things made the Order's work so much easier. It was easier to quietly deal with the night's monsters when one wasn't forced to also deal with a hysterical populace as well.

Still...every so often, he couldn't' suppress the little niggling feeling of how unfair it was that the rest of the world spent its days in satisfied ignorance, leaving the foulness that emerged from the dark corners to others.

Abruptly sitting up, Jinette scrubbed his face with his hands hard, as if the act would wipe away his pointless ruminations. It really didn't do any good, and it tended to make him rather surly which of course made everyone all the more anxious to avoid him. His isolation was making him out of touch, too far removed from the thoughts and ideas of the Order's members. It wasn't a good idea to allow that to continue since the Order's continuance rested right now on his decisions.

He had spent some time thinking about this problem and had found a small amount of resolution within himself. He needed to get out more, be seen more, and take part. With that in mind, he had the perfect opportunity.

Tintern Abbey, located in Wales, had been a silently active arm of the Order for hundreds of years. Outwardly, it was a small, apparently dirt-poor community of fanatically zealous scholars of minutiae that normally wouldn't interest anyone. The monks of Tintern had worked very hard to foster that illusion and had been remarkably successful. Their image of poverty and dullness had saved them from the interest of Cromwell and countless skirmishes that sacked and gutted larger outwardly wealthier monasteries and abbeys. And all along, the monks that populated the Abbey continued their quiet studies into the dark subjects that were the business of the Order. Over the centuries, the Abbey had acquired a massive amount of knowledge and had authored most of what was known of methods to fight the dark arts, the horrifying denizens of evil, and the shadows that blackened and turned normal men into maddened animals. Their studies had to do with the things that would be the nightmares of any sane man or woman so certain provisions had to be made for the problems that occasionally popped up. He was faced with such a problem now.

Tintern had had an unexpected bonanza when the raiding of a black warlock's castle had produced a treasure trove of black arts paraphernalia. The countless amazing items retrieved had also included a relatively disappointing book that had, in the heat of the first phases of the investigation, been set aside for later review. There had been so many many things far worthier of interest that it was easy to forget one scruffy, tattered book with a soiled leather cover and tarnished clasp. It wasn't until a year later, during a review of the contents of the castle, that they had recalled the book. It was located with some difficulty, and even then its investigation was given to a very minor friar.

Of course, given its history, it was almost expected that the book would prove to be the most valuable find of all. Within its battered covers were pages written in blood so old that it had turned black and become a part of the cracking velum. The contents of the book were quickly determined to be summoning spells. Each spell was itself a demon, imprisoned by the blood of sacrificed victims that served to bind the spirits into the book. It was a foul and horrifyingly evil thing and perversely the Abbey's greatest accomplishment.

The Tintern monks were to study the book, make proper notes of it, and then to have it carefully bound by the proper holy rituals before transportation to the Order in Rome. That was how such things had been done for time immemorial; the allotted time came and went without the delivery of the book. Communications with the Abbey were difficult and unsatisfying. At last, it had become evident that someone from Rome would have to journey to Wales to retrieve the book.

Normally, Jinette would have sent a hunter and several of his best monks who were well versed in black magic and the binding of it.

Now, given his past ruminations, he had something else in mind. He would go himself to Tintern. The Abbot there was well known to him through their past correspondence and he had often extended respectful invitations to the Cardinal to come observe their work. It appeared that he would now be able to take the opportunity. With that settled, there really only remained the final decision on who would accompany him.

Jinette rubbed his face again as he tiredly confessed that, whether he liked it or not, that decision was perforce already made. There was only one choice that would suit, though he wished with all his heart that wasn't so.

* * *

"Van Helsing! Don't be such a baby! You're hardly giving it a fair chance, you know!" 

Van Helsing stopped in his tracks to fix Carl with a cold glare. He and the friar were in the deserted gardens that were used for the hunter's trainings. The 'garden' part of the description hardly seemed apropos considering the devastation that had been wrought upon the small plot by various and sundry weapons, explosives, and thrashing bodies. All about them shattered and broken wooden targets swung forlornly from frayed ropes while the ground was riddled with the mortal remains of less fortunate practice dummies.

Standing amidst the carnage, Van Helsing stood with hands on hips as he glared down at his 'helper' and armorer. The hunter was using the very latest of Carl's new inventions and, for the most part, had been giving them all high marks. The exception was the source of their current argument.

Carl clucked with displeasure as he dropped his armload of oddments (mainly the broken bits of weapons that Van Helsing had destroyed in his enthusiastic product testing) and approached the hunter. Ignoring the hunter's baleful eyes, he set about straightening and cinching tight his latest, and possibly greatest, invention—flexible armor.

The waistcoat was made of thousands of linked circles of the finest steel and was fastened about Van Helsing's bare torso by heavy leather straps and buckles. It covered his shoulders, chest and stomach, all the way down to his hips, and was fully capable of stopping a direct sword thrust. No personal armor had ever been made with such exactitude; there was not a single vulnerable point anywhere, unlike other forms of armor that allowed a well-placed thrust to enter through chinks, seams, and holes. It really was a miracle invention and the hunter should have been quite pleased with it. That is if he wasn't such a stubborn, mule-headed, quibbler!

"This armor is going to save your life some day!" Carl said testily as he ignored Van Helsing's surly grunt of discomfort while he cinched the straps tighter.

"If it doesn't drive me insane first," the hunter snarled. "Carl...damnit...!" A loud smack and a louder yelp of indignation announced that Van Helsing had had enough and had given in to the urge to slap Carl's hands away from the straps. "I'm not some twelve-year-old stripling, Carl—leave me some room to breathe! And while we're at it, did it occur to you that while I'm not furbearing, neither do I have the smooth chest of a boy? This damn thing is pulling out all the hair on my chest! One by one! And that doesn't begin to address the pinching!"

Carl huffed, his face reddening as his cheeks puffed out then hollowed with several rapidly taken breaths as he rubbed his smarting fingers. Fixing Van Helsing with a glare that would melt glass and had served in the past to intimidate even the most recalcitrant apprentices he spoke slowly as if by doing so he could pound some sense down the rat hole of Van Helsing's stubborn truculence.

"It _has_ to be cinched tight—if I leave gaps, then that leaves you open to a sword thrust. As for your...chest hair...," Carl rolled his eyes, and then threw up his arms. "FINE. You may wear a linen or silk shirt under the armor. That should solve the problem of hair pulling and pinching. Alright?"

"It's a start," Van Helsing growled and reached for the fastenings only to have his fingers swatted away by an indignant friar.

"What are you doing?" Carl demanded. "We're not even close to being done! We need to test your reflexes, to see if the armor has slowed you down any."

The hunter looked down at the friar as he crossed his arms over his chest. From his stern unyielding gaze, to the set of his down turned lips, to the ominous bulge of his biceps, he was the very picture of unmoving mutiny.

Carl eyed the man before him with asperity, not for the first or last time regretting Cardinal Jinette's order that he work more closely with Van Helsing to better judge his needs. It was hoped (Carl permitted himself a hearty internal snort at this) that if Van Helsing's weapons and armor were of the best quality, it was just possible, surely, that he might actually bring home a monster in fact rather than an after-the-fact corpse. Personally, Carl had more faith in the tooth fairy. Still, he did as Cardinal Jinette instructed with the aim to provide the best weapons and protection possible for Van Helsing because he actually genuinely liked the man. When they weren't arguing, they often enjoyed each other's company, discussing everything under the sun. Those conversations were some of the happiest times of Carl's life.

Of course, everything has a price—and putting up with an occasional bad temper was the down side.

Sighing, Carl bit his bottom lip as he looked up at his friend. "I'll make a deal with you. You keep training for—oh—say a half hour. Really put your back into it. And we'll call it a day. Alright?"

Van Helsing raised one eyebrow as he looked down at the blond friar whose features were rapidly becoming obscured by the encroaching dark. They had started the training at dawn—a fact that Carl seemed to have forgotten in his single-minded pursuit of perfection.

"No." Van Helsing said quite firmly.

"Ah...no?" Carl blinked at the man, flummoxed. "You can't say 'no'. I'm supposed to help train you. How can I do that if you won't train?"

"You're not housetraining a puppy, Carl," Van Helsing said firmly as he proceeded to yank at the straps securing the hot prickling metal to his torso. "Trust me, if we stop a half hour early, no embarrassing puddles will crop up to give away your laxity. No one will ever know—and quite probably, no one will care."

"**I'll** care! I'm not doing this for my health you know! And leave that alone!" Carl swatted again at Van Helsing's hands and had his own fingers slapped smartly in return. What followed then was a free-for-all of slapping hands and then general tussling that waged across the garden until both men were rolling on the ground.

Van Helsing's bad temper had quickly turned to laughter with the advent of play and in striving to prove why the armor had to be tightly cinched, Carl was taking advantage to pin the other man while he pushed his fingers past the metal mesh to tickle the hot sweaty skin beneath remorselessly. Carl was delighted to find that Van Helsing was more than ticklish and quite lost his head as the man rolled and thrashed beneath him, moaning for him to stop.

"I guess this will teach you a lesson! Take that! And that!" Carl crowed and wriggled his fingers with a vengeance into Van Helsing's unprotected sides. The fact that Carl had had to undo the buckles himself during the struggle in order to have access to his victim didn't even cause him a second's repentance. "So now who's a puppy, hmm? Who's a big silly puppy! Hmm!"

Fighting and laughing and howling for air, neither man heard the swish of long robes nor did they see the scarlet red deepened to crimson in the evening's shadows until it brushed over Van Helsing's shoulder.

Instantly, all movement stopped.

Cardinal Jinette stood looking down at the two men who had returned successfully from Transylvania after fighting the most powerful monster in history and found himself seriously wondering how such a miracle could have taken place, given the sight before him.

Van Helsing, the Order's prime hunter, was sprawled over the battered ground. His long dark hair was shining in the dirt like a dark puddle of water, while his normally taciturn face was alive and alight with laughter. He wore only the vest Carl had created for him, a pair of torn and dirty black trousers and tall boots. The vest was askew, revealing entirely too much tanned and sweaty skin, although a good deal of that was currently hidden under Carl's hands.

Carl was seated like a monarch on the hunter's hips, his robes hiked up to his knees and his toes digging into the dirt as he apparently tortured the Order's fearsome hunter by tickling him. The friar's big blue eyes were now on Jinette's with an expression much like a young boy's who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Nothing moved except the almost imperceptible twitch of the ends of Carl's upturned hair.

They were like two rough necked boys, scuffling and overturning one another in the dirt—shameful. Disgraceful.

Jinette's eyes dropped to Carl's fingers still splayed over Van Helsing's stomach and heard the friar draw in a hiss of breath as he snatched his hands away. Van Helsing, far from being duly chastised, seemed to enjoy the whole thing and folded his arms under his head, fixing Jinette with an impudent grin.

With a snort, Jinette edged his foot forward from under his robe to poke at the hunter's bare midriff with the toe of his velvet shoe.

"If you are done playing, it grows late and you both should be inside. There are other things for you to be doing besides rolling about in the dirt."

"Er...actually...I was trying to make that point..., ah...never mind," Carl murmured and dropped his gaze, flushing when he heard Van Helsing snort.

"Hmph, no doubt," the Cardinal said dryly. "Consider the point tabled then, until a later time. Meanwhile, I will see you both, in the labs, in half an hour."

Turning, the Cardinal started off only to hesitate, then say over his shoulder thoughtfully. "It would not be amiss, I think, if in the time intervening you found some water and soap and made use of them."

"Yes, your Grace," came the replies, one chastised, the other with an all too audible smirk. Raising his eyes to heaven, Jinette restrained the urge to shake his head and continued on through the garden to return to the small door leading into the Order's inner sanctums.

TBC


	2. Bogey Man 2

Rating: PG13  
Pairing: Carl/Gabriel, not a slash pairing, but a deep friendship  
Series/Sequel: A new story

**Summary: The preparations get underway for the journey to Tintern**

Warning: Aspersions against the Church of Van Helsing's time (which I feel are merited); some violent concepts though not graphic

Disclaimer: I don't own anything (sniff), but I do like to play

**Feedback**:Thanks to reviewers **Gnome, ****Nikoru Sanzo, ****SeaDragon68, ****Runts Gal, ****Curious Dreamweaver, ****Luthien**

_Special thanks to my muse Archangel Gabriel, the patron saint of the written word._

* * *

**Bogey Man - 2**

Tintern nestled among the solid green fields, its unassuming stone walls rose in the late afternoon sun in stoic fortitude. The ramparts were as solid as the day the stones had been laid, the towers still formidable, and the heavy door that sealed its secrets inside remained strong and unyielding. To all intents, Tintern continued as it had for hundreds of years as a silent and unremarkable feature of an unremarkable landscape. It was inside the fortress that the rot had set in, unnoticed by the forgetful and disinterested world. Dust lay thick and undisturbed along corridors that, for the first time in centuries, were untraveled. There were no voices raised here, the rustle of sound came from errant breezes ghosting over scattered parchments rather than the hand of man turning pages. Beds remained unmade, books unread, uneaten meals lay rotting on plates set at empty tables.

The silence was absolute and should have given rise to the forlorn peace that comes to abandoned places. But curiously, the air had a waiting quality to it, as if unseen watchers kept silent vigil on the closed portals barring them from the outer world. Electric and uneasy, this feeling of watchfulness, of malevolence waiting for new amusements to arrive, kept at bay even the normal vermin that frequent such places.

Vermin, for all that they do not have the intelligence of man, possess a sense of self-preservation that man would do well to emulate. Man, however, has never aspired to emulate lower life forms, so the watchful vigil would soon be rewarded and another mystery would be absorbed into Tintern's silent history...

* * *

The Order's lab, based in the heart of the Catholic See, in the bowels of one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, was a noisy, hot, crowded place with an electrified excitement to it that made most people feel like ducking. Miracles were being born in the roaring forge and on the crowded messy table tops, and the men who worked there were duly appreciative of that fact. They treated their work and its purpose with a seriousness that was normally accorded to the passing of great heads of state. Men of all faiths found themselves working elbow to elbow and never found arguments springing up from their diversities because ultimately they were all united in a single cause…. 

"Carl, you are a _dead_ man!"

The master forgesmith shook his massive hammer in the face of the blond friar, his dripping face, normally scarlet from the heat of the flames he worked over, was now almost black with apoplectic fury. He jabbed his massively muscled arm at the wall of his forge which had served the Order for four hundred years and now sported a very impressive gaping hole in its side. Sparks and fire roared out of the new egress, driving the other craftsmen from their tables and benches to a safe distance where they tore at their clothing and hair, moaning with anger as the blast of flames consumed the work of years.

Carl stood with hands clutched at his chest, his shoulders so stooped that he barely reached the height of the smith's belt buckle; he peered around the massive behemoth before him at the devastation and sucked his lips in a rueful wince.

"How will you repair that?" the smith shouted at him, throwing his arms up into the air and treating Carl to a wave of body odor that he wouldn't have believed possible from another human being.

Surreptitiously holding his breath, Carl only shook his head and staggered back a step or two from the eye-watering stench. When he couldn't keep from breathing any longer, he gasped, wheezing.

"It wasn't my fault, you know! I work with unstable chemicals all the time and some of them are susceptible to heat and vibration."

"Why do I want to know this?" the smith roared, waving his arms as he stomped after the helplessly wheezing friar's retreat. "How will you fix my forge—_that_ is what I want to know!"

"And my work! How will you replace it?" Another craftsman joined the smith in his advance, followed by the rest of the craftsmen who either wanted recompense or to at least see Carl get a bit of what he had coming.

The friar's wide blue eyes darted about from one irate red face to the next as he backed into his table's solid edge and realized he could retreat no further. Behind him he heard the rattle and clinks of his own inventions and wondered if using them now against his fellow craftsmen in the preservation of his own life would be taken amiss. After all, anyone could make a sword but what Carl made was absolutely _unique_!

As the smith leaned over him, snarling in his face and Carl bent backwards over his table it occurred to the friar that the world could only be a better place with the removal of the smith and his appalling BO.

Carl was saved from homicide, justifiable or not, by Cardinal Jinette's raised voice bellowing over the noise. It was a testament to the respect and awe he was accorded that even the sullen smith fell back and dropped his head as the Cardinal moved through their ranks.

Jinette took in the ruined forge and the smoking charred tables in its immediate blast path before his eyes unerringly tracked to Carl's, capturing the friar's gaze and pinning it like a hapless bug. Carl couldn't speak, couldn't move from his position against his table—he could only sigh and waggle his fingers in a vaguely propitiating manner.

Jinette drew in a deep breath and released it in a resigned sigh. Gesturing to the other craftsmen, he ordered them to the various duties required to quench and repair the forge and to clear the detritus of the explosion away. The other men obeyed him but the looks they cast back at Carl assured the friar that he would do well to keep a healthy distance from them for a very long time.

Carl straightened and slid along the edge of his table until he reached the side closest to the door and a safe getaway. It seemed a very good idea to spend some quiet time steadying his nerves—elsewhere. But his planned strategic withdrawal was foiled by the return of Jinette's gaze. Carl cursed himself for being a staring adlepated turtle, gawping when he could have been putting in some solid footwork toward the great outdoors. Now, there was nothing for it but to face the music and to meet his fate with stoic dignity.

His resolve broke within the first five seconds.

"It wasn't my fault!" Carl whined as Jinette paced toward him. "I had no idea that the chemicals I'm using as a propellant in my new gun would be so sensitive to vibration. And I _have_ asked to have my bench moved further away from the forge. It was an accident waiting to happen…."

The friar had worked up a good head of steam and a heady dose of righteous indignation when Jinette cut him off with one raised finger. Like a switch, the words died on Carl's tongue and he was left blinking at Jinette's stern glare. When the Cardinal was certain that Carl would remain quiet, he crossed his arms over the scarlet robes of his office and tapped his foot. The foot tapping wouldn't normally have been audible, but with the forge's new silence it could be heard plainly and a tic began in Carl's right eye that kept pace with each muffled thump. Thump-_tic_ Thump-_tic _Thump_tictictictic_….

Carl rubbed viciously at his eye and turned away to look down at the parts strewn over his workspace, drawing deep steadying breaths.

Jinette restrained a sigh as he watched his youngest craftsman compose himself. He had long ago acknowledged two things to himself about Carl: That the man was a genius and if he didn't kill them all, he would eventually and against all odds probably end up saving the world. Right now, if he were a betting man, he would be giving heavy odds against the world. Still, he wasn't a naturally harsh man and to himself he could admit a sneaking fondness for Carl. So adjudging the friar duly chastised, he allowed the stern lines of his face to soften and his voice to take on a note of gentleness.

"Carl, what shall I do with you?"

Carl licked his lips and shrugged, his eyes rolling toward Jinette with a hopeful air. "Move my table? There's a spot further back that no one's using and it has some built-in shelves near by that I could _certainly_ make use of…."

"We will see," Jinette interrupted and restrained the urge to rub at the faint tic he felt start in his own eye. "As it is, I think it would be best for you to spend a little time away from your work here."

"Away?" Carl blinked, turning to look at Jinette worriedly. "But…I just got back," he reminded the man, his voice a soft whisper.

A smile tugged at Jinette's stern mouth and he allowed himself a sigh as he approached Carl to put an arm about his hunched shoulders.

"Yes, you did a fine job in Transylvania. And I need your help again. We shall be taking a little trip, you and I."

"You and…. A trip? You're _transferring_ me!" the last was a horrified squeak.

"A temptation upon occasion," Jinette admitted with a smile, "but not this time. I must tend to a matter in England. You and Van Helsing will be coming with me."

"Oh…," Carl breathed, "A mission? With you?"

"In a manner," Jinette agreed easily. "I think that you will enjoy the trip and you will be afforded an opportunity to view an unparalleled library while we are there."

This last was said in an offhand manner, like a doctor offers a sweet to dull the pain of a shot and Carl readily seized at it.

"Ohh," he smiled. "Well, that's different. I…I'd love to go to England…for a visit….with you. And Van Helsing, of course. Er…may I ask why…."

"Why am I going?" Jinette asked, "Or why is Van Helsing?"

"Er…both?"

Jinette patted Carl on the shoulder, gesturing him to follow as he moved through the milling craftsmen to make his way to the projector set at the other end of the vault-like chamber.

Van Helsing had arrived in the confusion and now lounged on one hip against a wall watching the muttering resentful craftsmen mop up the mess about them. He had the air of a man who was deriving a great deal of silent satisfaction from watching others deal with the unpleasant details of life for a change. As Jinette walked past, he apparently noted the hunter's smirking pleasure because his hand darted out to firmly swat the hunter's behind with a solid _THWACK_ before moving on

Van Helsing grimaced, one eyebrow darting up, but dutifully straightened up and followed the Cardinal and Carl to the waiting projector.

The monk behind the projector uncovered the burning candle within the box, causing an image of a large but unassuming building to appear on the opposite wall.

"This is Tintern Abbey," Jinette murmured, a note of pride in his voice at odds with the humble structure. "Almost since the Order began, we have maintained a presence in England for the study of the Dark Arts and its consequences. Generations of monks have spent their entire lives studying the enemy and how to fight his dark works. Much of what we know has come from Tintern."

"I've heard of it, of course," Carl murmured as he sidled up to the picture, eyeing it thoughtfully. "I thought it would be bigger…more imposing."

Jinette shrugged, briefly meeting Van Helsing's eyes and a knowing look passed between them. "Sometimes it is better not to advertise one's strengths," the Cardinal reminded Carl. "It does not pay to call attention to ourselves, either here or in England. This policy has served us well for centuries."

"What's the problem now?" Van Helsing asked quietly and Jinette smiled as he patted the hunter's arm, pleased.

"There _is_ a problem, though we do not have enough information to judge its severity. We will be going to Tintern to see for ourselves. If all is well, our visit will be brief and we will bring back a prize. If all is not well….."

"Ah, that would be were I come in?" Van Helsing said and Jinette shrugged as if the statement was self-evident and therefore nonsequitor.

Carl stood before the image of Tintern, his arms crossed as he leaned forward peering at the grainy image thoughtfully. "You mentioned a prize—Tintern's reputation is for the study of Dark Arts so that must be what we'll bring back. But I can only imagine that anything that wouldn't remain at Tintern must be very awful indeed. And if it's that awful, then…."

"It might be the cause of the problems there now," Van Helsing said. "Only the three of us are going, and you wouldn't be going if there was a monster to bring back," he hunter added with a glance at Jinette. "So it must be an object…."

"A book!" Carl interjected excitedly. "You said something about a fabulous library there. That must be _some_ book if they're not willing to keep it!"

Jinette hid a smile behind a hand placed at his mouth—he hadn't intended on making this a guessing game but he was beginning to see how Van Helsing and Carl had accomplished the unveiling of a mystery that had eluded the Valerious family for generations. Perhaps the two men did tend to treat their work with a touch of inappropriate lightheartedness, but they were successful so who was he to quibble?

Looking at the friar and hunter, Jinette lifted his hands with a shrug. "Now you have as much information as I. We shall leave tomorrow so take care you are prepared for the journey. Meet me at the stables at first light."

Jinette left Carl and Van Helsing to whatever further deductions and inferences they wished to make. He had his own tasks to attend to before he could consign himself to what Tintern held in store for them.

tbc


	3. Bogey Man 3

Rating: PG13  
Pairing: Carl/Gabriel, not a slash pairing, but a deep friendship  
Series/Sequel: A new story, it is able to stand on its own

**Summary: The travelers arrive in Wales**

**Notes: I should mention here that though my Abbey's name is Tintern, it is not meant to be the actual Tintern Abbey that exists in England. Any similarity of name or locale in this story with actual existing locations is purely coincidental. **

Warning: Aspersions against the Church of Van Helsing's time (which I feel are merited); some violent concepts though not graphic

Disclaimer: I don't own anything (sniff), but I do like to play

**Feedback**: **Thanks to reviewers Ney-Nya****Runts-Gal****Curious Dream Weaver****Nikoru Sanzo****Luthien****SeaDragon68**

_And thanks to my muse the Archangel Gabriel, patron saint of the written word._

* * *

**Bogey Man-3**

_Riddle: When there is no one there to scream, does evil go away? _

_Answer: Why should it? It has all the time in the world to wait for your return._

Light is a soother, a comfort to us. We have gone to great lengths to hold back the darkness even while we scoff at our fear of it. It seems a silly thing to say—but how often are we in total darkness? How hard have we struggled to make sure that we never are? And what if everything we had done to make sure that we kept absolute darkness at bay turned out instead to have brought out the very thing we feared the most? What if light makes what is evil real and the darkness of places underground, of the grave itself, was actually the only place evil could not manifest? Where could you go to find absolute blackness? And how long could you stand to be in it?

* * *

Their journey from Rome to Wales had been smooth and event-free. The three men, Jinette, Van Helsing, and Carl, had boarded their boat with little ceremony. Their cabins were ready and were better than they were used to. The ship had launched without fuss, and the weather remained perfect. Everything went smoothly, as if the fates themselves were eager for the men to reach their destination. 

They docked on a quiet nighttime quay and while Van Helsing and Carl claimed their luggage, the Cardinal entered the street to secure transportation.

The cobbles lining the road were smaller than Jinette was used to and felt unfamiliar and unfriendly beneath his feet. A light breeze wafted through his hair and over his skin, carrying scents and sounds that weren't readily identifiable. It had been a long time since he had traveled much beyond the See. He was used to the scents and sights about Rome and found himself uneasy with the feeling of being a stranger. Unexpectedly, it occurred to him that this feeling was something that Van Helsing carried with him on every mission and the thought brought with it a subtle sense of guilt. Perhaps it was true that he was indeed out of touch with his world if such a thing had never occurred to him. Still, now was not the time for giving any consideration to his revelation and he pushed the feeling back into his mind for later. Setting his jaw grimly, Jinette looked up and down the busy throughway for a conveyance.

The darkness settled about the quay was interspersed with tall lamps that cast a flickering yellow glow over everything, distorting it, making everything seem so much nearer and immediate. There was no distance to be had in their artificially lit world and Jinette found himself faced with an unexpected sense of claustrophobia. Normally, he was accorded distance by rote—his scarlet robes ensured that the dignity of his position was never presumed upon. But dressed now in dark travel robes and a long concealing coat, he blended in too well with the crowds about him.

His fellow passengers, for the most part, appeared to be better adapted to their surroundings than he. They called to friends and relatives waiting to greet them with voices made loud and irritating by the enclosure of the darkness. He had little patience with the jostling he received from all sides so he settled on the first conveyance that caught his eye. It was a small, mean trap with a dull coat of black paint that was peeling visibly. Its unsprung wheels squealed with each rotation and he could feel a headache hammering its way through his skull with each repetition of the aggravating noise.

On the carriage door was the uninspiring message that the conveyance was one of a line owned by Hawkers and Sons. The driver, presumably Hawkers, was a small hunched man in an ill-fitting black tail coat and a tall top hat that was probably meant to give a touch of class to his appearance. He didn't bother to get down to open the door for his fare, instead sitting with a sullen stare into the distance while he industriously picked his teeth with a thumbnail. Jinette peered up at the wrinkled face framed by a wealth of frizzy yellow hair and found himself wondering what Mrs. Hawkers looked like and how many sons she had had to give to this man before she could claim her body as her own and refuse him. Jinette's eyebrows dropped in a frown as he remembered such thoughts were hardly worthy of a Cardinal of the Church of Rome. If he had been asked, he would have denied such thoughts, but between himself and God he had learned to accept some leeway. He'd be more diligent in his nightly prayers and that would have to do until he met his maker for an accounting.

"There are two other men and our luggage," he called up to the driver. "We will need accommodations for the night."

Hawkers made a grunting noise in reply and winding the reins about the handle of his whip, climbed down from his high seat. With his odd appearance and oversized clothing, he appeared like an organ grinder's monkey in his scrambling descent and Jinette was tempted to humor by the sight. His ill-placed moment of joviality died a hard death when Hawkers turned about and met his eyes for the first time. It was obvious Hawkers indulged in a fair bit of drinking and judging by the cruel cast of his face and the sly sidling glances he viewed Jinette with, Hawkers was probably also a mean drunk.

Eyeing Jinette's plain but good-quality clothing, Hawkers considered before spitting a large wad of phlegm into the street and then wiped his red mouth on his dirty sleeve. "I know of a place," he growled, tossing his head in a gesture meant to convey the road to the north. "Decent place, not cheap but you don't look like you're hurting for money. I'll take you there for…."

The scrape of leather on rough cobbles interrupted Hawkers attempt at bald-faced robbery and both men turned to see Van Helsing approaching followed by Carl. The Hunter didn't bother to speak to the coachman, instead tossing up the heavy leather luggage onto the rooftop rack as if it were weightless. With each new piece added, the axils gave a protesting squeak and sank lower to the ground.

"Here!" Hawkers began to protest, but subsided as Van Helsing lofted the last piece before turning to look at him. As Van Helsing looked their driver over, Hawkers sniffed and pulled himself up straighter, even going so far as to adjust his tall hat so that it sat straight on his grizzled head.

A grimace skewed Van Helsing's mouth, but he dug into his pants pocket, extracted a coin, and tossed it to Hawkers who immediately set up a fuss.

Van Helsing wrenched open the door to allow Carl and Jinette to enter before he turned to the driver.

"Take us to a decent inn that won't gouge us and you'll get another coin. Keep complaining and you can spend the night in the water while we take your trap ourselves."

"That's robbery!" Hawkers snuffled with convincing righteousness only to fall silent as Van Helsing smiled at him.

"If you say so," the hunter murmured, and then swung up into the carriage, slamming the door shut behind him.

Faced with a loaded conveyance, the promise of additional money and the absolute certainty that Van Helsing would do what he said, Hawkers mounted the box without further delay and set off.

Inside, Jinette eyed the hunter with a mixture of disapproval and interest. "It is no wonder that you are a wanted man," he murmured. "I'm just surprised you have not ended up in jail long before this."

"That would put you in a bind, wouldn't it?" Van Helsing answered with a smirk.

"You take a great deal of satisfaction in that," Jinette sniffed. "A grown man should not enjoy chicanery so well."

Van Helsing shrugged as he looked out of the windows at the passing darkened shop fronts. He really didn't have any answer to make to that, he did enjoy his occasional set-to's with Jinette. As for the rest, the Cardinal was well aware of his feelings about having his face on wanted posters.

Their journey to the promised lodgings was accomplished quickly and upon their arrival at the quiet little hostel, Hawkers even unbent enough to lower their bags to them. Whether he did this for the promised reward or because Van Helsing's thoughtful gaze made him nervous was uncertain. While the bags were being lowered, Carl automatically went into the inn to verify they had suitable rooms available. He returned to help with the last bag, giving his companions a nod whereupon Hawkers received his coin from Van Helsing. Leaving the cabby biting the coin and looking pleased, the three travelers entered the inn.

The interior of the inn was basically a long box, sheathed in dark wood that held a strong scent of tobacco and ale. The lighting was quite dim, the majority of it coming from a large well-built fireplace at one end of the room. With the long bar down one side of the room and the cluster of closely set tables arranged down the other side, the walkway to the back of the room rather resembled a close, hot tunnel ending at the flickering maw of fire. It was difficult not imagine they were sliding down a long throat; still, in the flickering light and shadows, it was difficult to see the other patrons clearly, which suited Van Helsing very well as it meant they were equally well concealed.

The inn keeper directed them up the tall rickety stairs beside the fireplace chimney with something approximating pleasantness though he had no one to help them with the bags so they managed on their own.

They were lucky in that the inn was mostly empty—it seemed the crowd below was more interested in swilling down the innkeeper's good ale than in taking advantage of his accommodations. As a change, each man was able to have a room to himself for which all were grateful. They separated into their respective chambers with plans to meet up again for breakfast at dawn's light.

* * *

**Excerpt from Carl's Journal:**

At last! We're in Wales and safe and sound in our rooms. I've actually got a room to myself, fancy that! It pays to travel with a Cardinal, evidently, because our trip across the 'big wet' was quite easy. The ship launched on time, our cabins were quite luxurious, and the weather remained fine. My only complaint was that I had to share a cabin with Van Helsing, which wasn't such a trial, really. He claims that I snore, which keeps him up, but in fact he's a very restless sleeper at the best of times. I've told him time and again that he'd sleep so much better if he had some milk before bedtime, but he always turns his nose up at that!

Cardinal Jinette remained in his cabin for most of the journey, only venturing out around dusk to watch the sun set. It's a spectacular sight; I can well understand the allure. It's odd to spend time with him like this, without the enormous expanse of his desk between us. I'm more used to speaking to him from a penitent viewpoint than in simple small talk. As a result, I find myself tongue-tied and awkward. I think he understands, certainly he hasn't made any effort to avoid talking with me, though he seems to enjoy speaking with Van Helsing more.

Cardinal Jinette and Van Helsing—there's a pair for you! They seem to enjoy sniping at one another. I've watched them carry on a running argument from one day to the next and frequently there are smiles and snorts even as they say the most atrocious things to one another. I'm sure I'd be quite insulted if Van Helsing said to me half of the things he says to the Cardinal, but Cardinal Jinette seems to enjoy it. Maybe it's because he's given so much deference by everyone around him everyday he enjoys a bit of cheek. I hope so, as Van Helsing is bound and determined to give it to him!

As for myself, I'm glad to be on dry land again and am looking forward to our trip to Tintern tomorrow. The promise of that wonderful library quite makes up for the trip—I hope that they will let me borrow some of their books to take back to Rome. I know that I can get Cardinal Jinette to side with me if I show him how they would benefit my work. I need to put it to his Grace, though, when Van Helsing isn't about. Van Helsing will just snort at me and ask about the illustrations in a highly suggestive way and that would ruin everything.

It's a wonderfully dark night out tonight—as I'm unfamiliar with my room I think I'll leave a night candle burning, to prevent stubbed toes! Good night all!

* * *

**Van Helsing's Journal:**

At last, we've arrived on the Wales shore and can get this mission under way. I suspect Carl's anxious to get to Tintern as well, though he's probably more excited about getting his hands on the books in their library. I'll have to remember to tease him about that—he tends to disappear into his own little world too easily if I don't remember to keep calling him out of it. Come to think of it, though, I've seen some of Carl's books—they're not all about dark creatures and the esoterics of mechanics. Our friar likes to delve into a few of the racier works when he can get away with it. I've put several notations in some of the hotter books he's got stashed about his workbench and I'm looking forward to his discovering them! He always squawks like an outraged chicken, flapping his arms and bouncing about.

The trip has done little to change Jinette's view of the world. We spent most of our time together arguing—he seems to enjoy it and I enjoy seeing him flustered. I suspect that all of the thoughts that take up room in his skull aren't as proper as he'd like me to believe. It would please me to think that he's not so entrenched in Catholic dogma that he can't see the human side of things. I'll keep on baiting him until I find out for certain, at which point the sky will probably tumble down from the heavens and Apocalypse will arrive. I never saw a man so much in dire need of a good stiff drink and a rowdy roll in the hay. Heaven forbid!

Enough writing for tonight. I need to tend to the weapons so they're ready for tomorrow-I pray that they won't be needed. After that, a much desired night's sleep (without the constant saw and rasp of Carl's snoring). Thank God it's good and dark!

* * *

**Cardinal Jinette's Journal:**

Tomorrow we will see Tintern for the first time. I pray all is well though I cannot loose a small dread. There has never been a problem with communications with Tintern—for there to be so now suggests only the worst possible situation has arisen.

My companions are an interesting example of opposites. Carl is in good spirits and quite vocal in his plans for the Abbey's library. In the event that Tintern is actually well, then my next worry shall no doubt be how to separate Carl from the library. I suspect he will try to get around me with puppy dog looks and many sighs. Normally I would be dreading having to talk him around, but I think instead I shall leave it to Van Helsing. He seems to enjoy causing Carl much trouble and I will admit here that I do enjoy watching it.

What will I do with Carl? He is brilliant but the man has no concept of how to get along with the rest of the world. It would help, of course, if the rest of the world would simply make allowances, but I don't believe that will happen.

As much as we argue, I have less trouble with Van Helsing. At least the trouble he makes is always on someone else's doorstep. I have grown used to his manner—he seems to delight in trying to shock me. I have seen far too much of life to be so easily confounded but there is no reason to tell him that. As it is, our arguments keep me on my toes. Why fear the turnings and twistings of the devil's machinations when I have Van Helsing to keep me on the straight and narrow? The man is a trial, but one that is not too onerous and I find a certain comfort in his presence with the possibility of trouble on the horizon. I have watched his eyes when we talk of Tintern—he is prepared for any trouble that will arise.

Enough for tonight. Tomorrow is soon enough to consider the workings of the world. With luck, there will be a full moon tonight to ease the darkness.

tbc


	4. Bogey Man 4

Rating: PG13  
Pairing: Carl/Gabriel, not a slash pairing, but a deep friendship

Series/Sequel: A new story, it is able to stand on its own

**Summary: The travelers prepare to ride out to Tintern**

**Notes: I should mention here that though my Abbey's name is Tintern, it is not meant to be the actual well-known Tintern Abbey that exists in Wales. Any similarity of name or locale in this story with actual existing locations is purely coincidental. **

Warning: Aspersions against the Church of Van Helsing's time (which I feel are merited); some violent concepts though not graphic

Disclaimer: I don't own anything (sniff), but I do like to play

**Feedback**: For all of you who followed the past stories, I hope that you find this story equally as interesting if not more so! Your reviews and suggestions are, as always, deeply appreciated! Due to Fanfiction rules I am unable to thank you in depth but I would like to say thanks to reviewers **Curious Dream Weaver****Iblis, ****Nikoru Sanzo****Luthien****SeaDragon68**

_And thanks to my muse the Archangel Gabriel, patron saint of the written word._

* * *

**_It is a fact that man finds it almost impossible to stop thinking. Even in the act of 'not thinking' we are thinking about how to stop. We populate the shadows with human forms, and make familiar, noises that are strange. It would never occur to us not to do this._**

**_It's only a little longer now. In a short time, the shadows will find new forms to wear._**

* * *

**Bogey Man-4**

The new day dawned with a cold wetness to it that was at odds with Rome's normal dry warmth. Carl, covered in blankets that cocooned him from head to foot, buried as deeply as he could get into the warm rag-stuffed pad that served as his mattress, looked at the new day with a distinct air of misgiving. He'd made up his mind, in a general, non-argumentative, unassuming way, that nothing would get him out of his warm nest until the day warmed up to a decent temperature. The fact that it was an autumn month and the likelihood of it getting much warmer for some time wasn't high didn't faze him in the least. He was prepared to wait. All day if necessary.

Regrettably, Van Helsing was not. Carl rolled one bleary blue eye about his room and spotted the source of the annoying incessant rasping noise right away. Van Helsing, sitting on the small breakfast table, his booted feet in the chair—using a whetting stone to sharpen his tojos. The tojos Carl had made for him that the hunter was now using to slowly torture Carl into barking madness.

"Grmph!" Carl growled, hoping a simple sign of displeasure would alert the man, without necessitating the labor of actual words.

"Morning. I was wondering if you were awake. Playing possum?"

Of course, some people weren't really good with nonverbal communications. Some people required a little more effort.

"Why?" Carl growled.

"Why what?"

The other blue eye reluctantly opened to pin the hunter with the full force of Carl's disapproving gaze. "Why...are...you...here?" The eyes rolled over to the still-dark window. "Oh my God," he moaned. "It's the middle of the night, Van Helsing! Get out!"

The hunter snorted, but made no effort to arise from his perch. It occurred to Carl that the hunter's posterior was taking up the space that he had originally intended to eat a leisurely breakfast at. Eying the firm buttocks planted solidly there now, he reluctantly revised his plans to have breakfast downstairs. Friars were indoctrinated into a simple, unassuming life upon their entry to the church, but it did seem a bit hard that he couldn't even manage breakfast in his room just once.

During his internal moment of self-pity, Carl had forgotten the hunter. He was reminded when the rasping stopped and Van Helsing lay his weapon and the whetting stone down and fixed Carl with a determined gaze. Tossing his booted feet off the chair, he landed onto the planed wooden floor with a thump.

"It's morning, Carl. Dawn's early light. You get up this early all the time."

"_Grdmphngg_"

One dark eyebrow rose as Van Helsing waggled a finger at Carl's lumpish form. "Ah ah, we've spoken about the swearing, Carl. How will you ever become a monk if you swear like a sailor?"

Carl's blue eyes glared at the hunter with a mute follow-up to his earlier mumbled imprecations that made Van Helsing snort again.

"Alright, that's enough of that. I brought you breakfast—breakfast in bed, Carl. You'd enjoy that."

The blue eyes blinked and lost a good deal of their former animosity, taking on instead a surprised and pleased light. It might still be the middle of the night, but breakfast in bed didn't happen often enough to quibble over small details. He could see now, behind Van Helsing, a tray with covered dishes on it and the blankets slid down enough to allow him to sniff the air hungrily. Van Helsing's mouth twitched upwards into a lopsided smirk as he turned to lift the tray.

"You'll need to sit up—you'll spill your tea if you don't."

"Tea?" Carl asked with interest and breathtaking clarity.

"With milk and lemon, the way you've asked for it in the past." Van Helsing assured the friar and his white teeth flashed in a full grin as the lump that sprawled over the bed now began a series of upheavals that resulted in Carl sliding up to place his back against the wall as he made a lap for the tray.

The hunter settled the warm tray on the blanket-covered thighs and received a happy smile in return. He then dragged the chair up to the bedside and settled himself comfortably; legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, his arms folded over his chest.

Carl lifted the covers off the dishes with a unique pleasure—he had never had breakfast in bed before—and what meals he had taken in bed had been when he was too sick to enjoy them and certainly never covered. With a shivery sort of sybaritic pleasure, Carl uncovered each chipped heavy dish to reveal toast with marmalade, oatmeal, kippers and tomatoes, and a fat round tea pot snuggled inside a cozy. He wriggled his toes with pleasure as he measured out the milk into the battered earthenware mug, then poured his tea, stirring it, before adding a judicious squeeze of lemon. His first sip was followed by an extravagant groan of pleasure that made Van Helsing laugh out loud.

"Carl, how will you ever survive being a monk? It seems to me that you enjoy life a good deal too much to ever settle for monkhood."

Swallowing his mouthful of nirvana, Carl looked up through his eyelashes at Van Helsing, his mouth still hovering over the mug's rim, to murmur, "Monkdom."

"What?"

"Monkdom," Carl repeated as he took another sip and swallowed. "Monkhood isn't technically wrong, but it's more often said when referring to the Buddhist religion."

"Hmph. Both religions might raise an eyebrow at the things you get away with, Carl. Come clean—how many friars act as you do?"

A smile played about Carl's lips as he shrugged before carefully setting down his mug on the tray in favor of tackling his breakfast. "It hardly matters, Van Helsing, as there isn't another friar or monk like me. I'm unique."

"Hardly that!" Van Helsing snorted. "I've heard enough of your reputation with tavern doxies to know you can at least manage the basics..."

Carl spluttered, coughing roughly on a bite gone down the wrong way before fixing Van Helsing with a searing gaze. "I said 'unique', not 'eunuch'!"

"Oh, sorry." The hunter smirked at his irate friend and shrugged. "It's hard to understand when you speak with your mouth full. Still, once you take your vows, the difference will be slight."

Scowling, Carl viciously cut into his kippers, briefly imagining Van Helsing on the plate. "Why are you here, Van Helsing? And why are we talking about this?"

The hunter smiled sweetly and shrugged. "It's my job, my curse, to get you up in the morning, Carl. You're a stubborn man; it takes some work to get your blood hot enough that you'll actually get up out of a warm bed."

"Hmph, well consider the job done," Carl sniffed before transferring a huge forkful of kippers and tomatoes to his mouth which were masticated with a vengeance.

"Good!" Van Helsing nodded with a pleased expression. "Now that your mind is working, I need you to use it to help me convince Jinette not to come with us to Tintern."

Carl swallowed his mouthful and wiped his frowning mouth with his napkin. "What? Why?"

The chair squeaked beneath the hunter's weight as he shifted forward, drawing his long legs up to plant his elbows on his knees as he met Carl's puzzled gaze. "We don't know what is wrong at the Abbey, Carl. I want to be sure it's safe before we bring Jinette there. You've been on a mission; you know how to take care of yourself. I don't want to bring home Jinette's corpse if what's at Tintern turns out to be bad."

"Oh!" Carl blinked and swallowed hard. Suddenly, his lovely breakfast felt more like a lump of dough in his belly and he pushed the tray away queasily. "You think there's something awful there, then?"

Van Helsing shook his head but the dark frown on his mouth didn't settle Carl's nerves at all. The friar allowed the hunter to take his tray, rising to put it on the table before he turned back to Carl.

"Get up and get dressed, Carl. Jinette's up and should be coming down shortly. We'll need to discuss this with him as soon as possible. I'm counting on your remarkable brain to help me talk him out of coming with us on this first trip." With a firm pat on the friar's knee, Van Helsing left the room, plainly on his way down to the common room to meet with Jinette.

Carl sighed as he pushed back the covers and prepared himself for the day ahead while wistfully pondering how being unique always seemed to land him in trouble.

* * *

Cardinal Jinette was enjoying his leisurely breakfast. He didn't often have the time to indulge in such a thing and the opportunity this morning pleased him immensely. As he carefully cut his food into a manageable mouthful, he noted Van Helsing's arrival on the staircase, taking in the hunter's frown and thoughtful expression. Ah, it seemed the hunter would be having words with him; Jinette hoped that Van Helsing had already had his breakfast, sparring was so much more enjoyable on a full stomach. 

Van Helsing approached the Cardinal's table, nodding his thanks when Jinette signaled him to be seated.

"Have you had your breakfast, Van Helsing?" Jinette asked with a small smile. "The food is quite good, although unusual for our tastes..."

"I've eaten," Van Helsing interrupted, and then grimaced with contrition. By way of reconciling he added, "I've gotten Carl stirring. He's eaten as well; when he comes down, he should be ready to travel."

"Ah, breakfast in bed," Jinette smiled. "He would enjoy that. You take excellent care of him."

"My only concern is that he's ready for what's ahead," Van Helsing said firmly. "And since we don't **_know_** what that might be, I need him to be sharp and alert. He's done this before; I know that he's ready. Which brings us to you, your Grace..."

"Hmph. I was wondering when you bring that up," Jinette nodded before he took another bite, leisurely enjoying the unfamiliar textures and tastes as he watched Van Helsing's dark brow rise. He was coming to understand the hunter, to anticipate his moods and feelings. That thought pleased Jinette, the feeling of being out of control, out of touch, was fading slowly. And, if he were truthful, it pleased him that Van Helsing should be concerned for him. It was all too easy to see the hunter as a sort of mindless, soulless killing machine. To have this chance to observe his finer human qualities, to converse with him and to discern the humanity in his voice and on his face was a soothing balm to Jinette's mind.

Unaware of the thoughts running through the other man's mind, Van Helsing shifted in his seat and resisted the urge to clench his jaw. He was a direct man, used to doing what needed to be done with the least amount of dilly-dally. He wasn't a diplomat, he had no gift for convincing others of what should be plainly obvious—it always seemed inevitable that the more obvious a thing, the less likely those who would be harmed were to see it. Short of a bloody saber waving in their face, most people tended to view harm as something that happened to other people.

Well, Van Helsing was the Bad Thing that happened to bad people and he had no such delusions that good people didn't get hurt as easily as bad.

"Your Grace," he began carefully, marshalling his thoughts even as he mentally castigated Carl for his tardiness. "Tintern is an unknown to us. There may be fighting from the beginning. It would be best if Carl and I went alone, the first time, to make certain it's safe."

"Safe?" Jinette murmured musingly. "My son, I have been on this earth a good many years and I have been in charge of the Order for only slightly less. I am not as naive as you would imagine. I do not fool myself into thinking any place is 'safe'. Whatever awaits us in the shadows of Tintern will be dealt with. I will be able to take care of myself."

"That may be," Van Helsing growled doggedly. "But there is no reason to put yourself in danger unnecessarily."

"You would rather I send **_you_** into a danger I will not face myself?" Jinette asked with a smile and patted Van Helsing's clenched hands that lay on the table between them. "You asked me once why God does not handle the evils of the world himself. I think it is because we have chosen to do it for him. We are his army, his left hand, Van Helsing. I am prepared for whatever awaits me as a soldier in his army."

The hunter resisted the urge to close his eyes in resignation. He knew Jinette was stubborn, and he couldn't refute the man's logic. But he also **_knew_** that Jinette should not come with them to Tintern.

Any argument he might have made was cut short by the welcome sight of Carl stumbling blearily down the stairs, clutching a mug of tea.

"Ah, our friar has at last joined us. I wonder what he will have to say on this?" Jinette smiled at Van Helsing with a raised eyebrow. "Perhaps he will agree with you, no?"

Van Helsing only frowned and settled back in his chair. Carl shuffled through the minefield of empty tables and chairs to join them at the table, gratefully sinking into the chair Jinette indicated.

"So Carl, you have had a restful sleep and are now wide awake?" Jinette asked with a smirk. Carl made no answer, only waved a vague hand before submerging himself into his mug once again. The Cardinal shook his head with resignation. Carl had many gifts, but mornings were not one of them. "Van Helsing and I have been discussing our travel plans. We will be ready to go shortly; I hope that you will be ready?"

Carl's head bounced up and down in an absent-minded affirmative only to suddenly jerk upright as Van Helsing booted him solidly in the shin.

"Oh! Er...our travel plans... Er..you'll be going to Tintern this morning, your Grace?" he gulped and blinked at Jinette. "Would it be better..."

Jinette spared Carl the effort of coherent thought by waving a finger at him. "Yes, Carl, I shall be going. After all, if I were not going, how would you find your way to the Abbey?"

"Um...I suppose, we'd ask? Surely anyone could direct us?" Carl murmured, tossing a look Van Helsing's way to see the hunter fixing the Cardinal with a dark frown. "Couldn't they?"

Jinette busied himself with the last bits of food on his plate, savoring the final morsel. He could see Van Helsing's irritation bubbling just beneath the surface and perversely took pleasure in it. Right now, the hunter would be asking himself what he had to do to make Jinette see sense. He would be right, from his own viewpoint as a man who hunted things in the darkness and was aware that there was no place on earth that did not have shadows. Still, short of a miracle, he had done everything that he could to convince Jinette to his point of view without success. It was now time to show Van Helsing that he was as locked into their course as the hunter was.

"No, I think they would be at a loss to help you," he answered Carl. "Tintern Abbey, to the common Welshman, is a well-known ruin in the beautiful Wye Valley. It has been the subject of artists and poets for hundreds of years and is certainly well deserving of the accolades. We of the Order, however, do not function so well in the full-light of the world's regard. We will go instead to another location, bearing the same name."

"Same name?" Carl asked, blinking with confusion. "I don't understand."

Jinette shrugged. "It is a long story that I will be pleased to tell you later. For now, let us prepare to leave."

Pushing back from the table, Jinette gestured to the innkeeper who had maintained a respectful distance. The man came at once, bobbing and bouncing.

"Er, yer Grace," he murmured, "The horses are outside. Are ye sure ye don't wish a carriage? It's a fearsome long way on horse back and bound to be uncomfortable."

"We shall manage," Jinette assured his host and pressed coins into his hands. "This will reserve our rooms, yes? We will need to retain them, locked, during our absence. You will see to this?"

"Of course, yer Grace," the innkeeper said with a laudable air of injured pride. "Exactly as we discussed, yer rooms will be kept secure."

"And the letters?" Jinette pressed, smiling when the landlord patted a pocket.

"I'll post 'em on tonight's outbound mail packet meself."

"Very well," Jinette said and gestured to the two men. "Then we shall finish our preparations and be away."

Van Helsing could only sigh and think with fondness of the dart gun he kept in his coat upstairs-how many weeks in Hell would darting a Cardinal get him?

tbc


	5. Bogey Man 5

Rating: PG13  
Pairing: Carl/Gabriel, not a slash pairing, but a deep friendship  
Series/Sequel: A new story

**Summary: The Order arrives at Tintern**

Warning: Aspersions against the Church of Van Helsing's time (which I feel are merited); some violent concepts though not graphic

Disclaimer: I don't own anything (sniff), but I do like to play

**Feedback**: For all of you who followed the past stories, I hope that you find this story equally as interesting if not more so! Your reviews and suggestions are, as always, deeply appreciated! Due to Fanfiction rules I am unable to thank you in depth but I would like to say thanks to reviewers **Jania, ****Ney-Nya, ****Iblis, ****SeaDragon68, ****Runts Gal, ****Nikoru Sanzo, ****Curious Dream Weaver, ****Gnome, ****Toto3**

_Special thanks to my muse Archangel Gabriel, the patron saint of the written word._

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_**It's a theory that nothing ever really dies or goes away. It only changes from one form of existence to another. Life, emotion, memories, all become another form of energy, like electricity, that remains after the original has long gone.**_

_**How old does ordinary hatred have to be in order to take on life that is as real as our own? A rich, burnished, sultry life that enjoys its freedom and the ability to act on the world unfettered by any living or non-living thing. What would it feel like to let go and hate, absolutely; to wish harm to someone, absolutely; to pray for their body and soul to be wracked with agony that would go on unrelenting and without end. Imagine wallowing in their pain, drinking down their agony like the finest wine…forever. If theories are true, hatred is a living visceral thing that has no conscience, no compassion, and no end.**_

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**Bogey Man - 5**

The original and well-known Tintern Abbey is situated on Wye River. Its finely sculpted form was razed by Henry VIII's men for the lead in its roof and the stained glass windows were smashed to let in the elements in the hopes that the faithful could be discouraged. While the Abbey could no longer host the pageantry of the Catholic faith, its demise was only partial—its beautiful architecture would serve as a reminder and a buttress to faith for centuries to come.

Up river, the Wye becomes more narrow and cascades develop. The iron forges dot the shores, almost shoulder to shoulder with farmland and cottages. A little further and cliffs rise above all. No villager climbed these cliffs, they had no reason to. The days of the cottagers, farmers and iron workers were filled with the doings of daily life and they were left little to no time for idle curiosity. Occasionally, men would come _down_ from the cliff, though-men in somber clothing, trousers, poor tunics and dark coats, to buy supplies. They would return the way they had come, back up the cliff, presumably on their way back to someplace set far back in the dark sycamores that ranged beyond the cliffs. This had gone on for centuries, it was expected. When it stopped, it raised some question, but not enough to prompt anyone up the cliff. True, the ascent wasn't difficult but even the small effort necessary didn't promise much in the way of returns once the top was achieved. Also, life was difficult enough without mixing in unproductive curiosity. But most of all what kept the cliffs free of travel was the tales brought back from occasional tourists who came in the hopes of seeing what had inspired Wordsworth. They climbed eagerly, believing themselves on the path to a momentous epiphany of nature only to instead feel a faint unease, a slight feeling of uncertainty, that grew until, only half way up, they were assailed with a feeling of dread and danger that made even the most curious rethink the climb. No villager ever questioned this, at least not out loud. Evil doesn't come if you don't call its name, everyone knows that.

The three men of the Order arrived at the cliffs late in the day. The afternoon sun beat down on their leather-clad shoulders, making them uncomfortably hot and their bodies ached from the hard journey. Without speaking, they dismounted their horses to climb the steep road up the cliffside to reach the forgotten arm of the original Abbey. The way they followed upwards was hardly more than a badly-deteriorated earthen trail pockmocked with fallen stones and choked with weeds, but it was wide enough to lead the horses single file and the men were grateful for the chance to stretch their legs.

As they climbed, they were sensitive to the watchful gazes of the people below, on the other side of the cascades. The observation wasn't overtly aggressive, rather a simple marking of interest to be stowed away for a later cursory remark to the family over a full dinner table. At first the three men attributed the unease they felt to that silent regard but as they climbed higher the villagers took a back seat to the burgeoning feeling of danger coupled with a disgust of foul things that made their faces twist and their nostrils flare as if to catch scent of a rotting carcass. The breeze, though, carried nothing more than the scent of normal growing things.

Van Helsing, leading the others, paused and looked back at Jinette with a grim air. He saw the prelate's normally pale skin tones had blanched even further and his mouth was set in a hard livid line. The feeling of evil was so strong; it didn't take Van Helsing's honed senses to make it out. Carl, the last in the line, looked as if he were alternately fighting the urge to bolt or to vomit. Having been with Van Helsing on the trip to Transylvania he had believed himself ready for whatever came of this trip as well. It was a hard jolt to find out that he wasn't. The horses were trembling and skittish and by mute consensus, the men covered their eyes to keep them from bolting.

They were scarcely half-way to the top of the cliff but to go any further was impossible with the animals. They were not able to turn around, but with care they backed down the rest of the way, one step at a time. By the time they got to level ground again, the horses were calm.

"We'll need to leave them at the village," Van Helsing sighed. "We'll make packs of what's necessary and leave the rest. If we need it later, we can fetch it from the village."

"I would prefer not to involve the villagers any more than necessary," Jinette said and Van Helsing nodded as he scanned the opposite shore.

"There was a farm, set apart from the others that we passed on our way here. It should do. Carl can go back with the horses to work out an agreement for stabling them." Van Helsing smiled at the friar, "You might want to see if they'll board you too, overnight. No reason to try to get back here in the dark if you don't have to, though I know you're eager for it."

"Ah..eager…yes," Carl grimaced, doing his best to hide his relief.

They stripped the necessary supplies from the horses, leaving the rest, and made packs for Jinette and Van Helsing, the hunter silently ensuring that his contained most of the heavy items. The Cardinal made no outward note of this except a small huff of amusement. He and Van Helsing had their differences and that he was used to—this new watchfulness over his welfare would take a bit of curbing.

Carl left them with a wave that he did nothing to disguise the joyfulness of and Jinette and Van Helsing once again turned their grim faces to the trail.

The cliff was not particularly tall nor grand, but it took them an hour to reach the top. Without a doubt, the closer they got to the top, the slower their steps became despite the feeling that they were traveling at a decent clip. As it was, the sun was just touching the horizon when they stepped into the meadow, ringed by trees that obscured Tintern. Without a word, they waded through the grass, entering the boundary of shadows cast by the dark sycamores. The belt of trees was dense but not wide and they reemerged after an hour to stand once again in the hip-high grasses and weeds. A half mile beyond their current location the solid squat building of Tintern rose before them and they viewed it with eyes that held curiosity, wariness, and deep aversion.

As far as architecture went, this arm of Tintern was an unexpectedly grim, unremarkable structure—its stone façade had been fashioned in a long boxlike shape that rose to a height of 2 stories. Each side was punctured on the second story with ordinary windows whose dark glass was begrimed with the dust and dirt that blew up from the meadow and the chemical residue carried on the wind from the iron forges down river. A large courtyard, surrounded by a low stone wall, encircled the building and the earth hosted a variety of plants in the recognizable rows of an extensive garden. There were no lights shining from the windows and the large wooden door visible at one end of the structure was tightly closed.

"Home sweet home," Van Helsing remarked, rolling his eyes at Jinette who shook his head.

"Hmph, I don't like to think of your idea of 'home', Van Helsing. Still, no doubt this feeling that surrounds the building is the result of centuries of housing and studying evil."

"I was hoping it was something special, trotted out just for us."

"You are welcome to go to the door, then, and thank them for the welcome," Jinette sniffed with a sly look at the hunter.

"Nooo, I think it's a little late for informal guests to turn up. It's probably better form to camp here tonight and start for Tintern in the morning. With luck, Carl will be back by then. I doubt he'll want to enter Tintern on his own."

Jinette snorted as he slid his heavy pack off with relief. "If you believe that you shall see Carl in the morning, then you are a far greater believer in miracles than most."

Van Helsing unslung his pack, kneeling with it to pull out the supplies they would need for an evening in the meadow. He had noted Jinette hadn't argued with spending the night outside of Tintern's walls and his mind was already coming up with questions that he fully intended to get answers for. In the meanwhile….

"You're a man of God, it's _your_ job to believe in miracles, I just hope for them. For now, though, I'd settle for the miracle of finding enough stones to build a small fire pit. I'll clear these weeds enough to keep the fire from spreading if you can look around for some tinder and a few stones. Don't lift anything too heavy—I don't want to have to carry you over Tintern's threshold."

Jinette laughed out loud as he turned away, saying, "A charming picture that would make. I did not think you had so much imagination."

Van Helsing snorted as he drew his knife and began to hack off he weeds and grasses close to the earth within a rough circle. "As head of the Order, you have only yourself to blame for my imagination."

Van Helsing watched from the corner of his eye as Jinette ambled off to begin his search, noting the man did not venture any closer to Tintern but rather did his gathering to either side of the forrest's edge. He found himself hoping Jinette didn't get lost in the dark and hid the smile at the thought of what the prelate would have to say to that. As it was, he didn't blame Jinette for his reticence—the time they had spent on the outskirts of the Abbey had in no way diminished the unpleasant feeling of crawling danger that Tintern evoked. Van Helsing found himself wishing he had a light, any sort of light, that would push back the darkness even a little. The moon was too small to be of any use and the area was rapidly becoming pitch black. He hurried the chore of clearing the weeds, using the physical labor as a focus for his mind. It worked to some extent, but once he'd cleared a rough three-foot circle, he was forced to admit the job, and its attendant distraction, was done. As he stood in the cleared area, his mind once again free and open, he tasted the sharp metallic essence of fear in his dry mouth once again and the hair on his neck and arms rose. He was a man who was quite familiar with this feeling, having spent all of the life he was capable of remembering fighting evil in all of its forms. The logical, ordered instincts of a civilized man had never served him well in the field. Instead, he relied on instincts that originated on a more basic level—that of the hunter and, occasionally, prey and his instincts flatly refused to give way. The man who was used to a soft bed, clean clothing and a roof over his head was all but insisting on the need for light—the hunter was insisting that was the worst thing he could do.

It had grown quite dark, in the wan light reflected from the crescent moon, the shadows moved in a confusing manner as the light breeze swayed through the tall grass. The hunter noted there were none of the normal night sounds that should have begun with the night's advent. Cricket song, at least, should have started up as soon as the sun started to sink. The fringe of trees behind them that circled around to enclose Tintern should have been alive with bird music during twilight. Instead, the only sound was the mindless continual swishing of the grass. Judging by what he felt while standing some distance from Tintern's walls, he could well understand how nothing that could fly or walk would want to get within a mile of the Abbey if it could help it.

Giving heed to the growing worry for his absent companion, Van Helsing tore his eyes away with some effort and set off after Jinette, keeping his footfalls soft. The area was alive with midnight black shadows that his eyes could not pierce. He welcomed the dark now, finding comfort in the fact that he was no more visible to his enemies than they to him. The complete absence of apparent foes didn't faze him-he'd spent too long as a hunter and would not bow down now to his fears, so he continued on from shadow to shadow with all senses alert.

He found Jinette a short time later, sitting on the ground surrounded by small stones and sticks, staring avidly into the flickering light of a struck match. The man didn't make a sound, hardly blinked, just stared into the light with a steadfast intentness that made Van Helsing's hackles rise and a soft growl rumble in his chest as he watched the rippling shadows on the outskirts of the light grow darker and thicker, slowly constricting. The hunter's eyes immediately cut to Tintern, assessing it thoughtfully as one would a foe. Then he moved, fast, over the small distance between Jinette and himself, throwing himself over the last few feet so that one hand caught at and extinguished the small flame while the other clapped over Jinette's mouth. He landed on top of the cleric and so was able to contain his fierce struggles as his hand held back the shouts that boiled up from Jinette's gaping mouth.

They lay on the trampled ground, Van Helsing pinning the older man with all of his weight as he caught at Jinette's chin with his free hand to drag it up until the prelate's mouth was closed.

"Quiet!" he growled at the wide grey eyes. "You're safe. They can't find you in the dark. Stay quiet."

For a moment he could feel the bunched muscles beneath him shudder and then Jinette's body went limp and the grey eyes staring up at him blinked for the first time. With that a small smile came to Van Helsing's lips and he carefully lifted his hand from Jinette's mouth.

"You alright?" he murmured as his watched the other man for any signs of his earlier panic.

Jinette nodded, then whispered, "Get up. You're squashing me."

"That's the thanks I get?" Van Helsing huffed but he rolled off the other man into a crouch and helped him to sit up.

Jinette didn't meet his eyes when he spoke, instead he concentrated on brushing off the dirt and broken grass stalks from his clothing and hair as he fought down the urge to peer into the darkness. "You said 'they'. Who are they?"

The hunter shrugged, frowning slightly as he recalled the almost instinctual warning he'd hissed earlier. "I don't know. I wasn't thinking when I said that, but I believe now that it's true. There's something that wants us to make a light, I can feel it."

"How would you know such a thing?" Jinette asked, eyes narrowing with confusion.

Van Helsing could only shake his head; how could he explain the instincts that kept him alive to this man who spent most of his time in the safe confines of the Palace? He'd simply _known_ that they were far safer in the dark. Which meant their plans had changed radically. Abruptly, he stood, pulling the surprised Cardinal up with him.

"We can't have a fire," Van Helsing said grimly as he started back for their makeshift camp. "No light of any kind. And we'll need to make better plans for how to approach Tintern—we can't go during the day."

"That doesn't make sense," Jinette panted as he was pulled along behind Van Helsing. Normally he would resent the hunter dragging him by the hand as if he were an adlepated child—in this instance he felt only a sense of relief at the touch of another human hand, although he would never, ever tell Van Helsing so. "How can we hope to fight what is here if we cannot see it?"

"I think 'seeing' it is the problem," Van Helsing said grimly. "I get the impression that it wants us to see it. What kind of monster wants light? _Wants_ you to strike a match or open a window to the sun or moonlight?"

Unfamiliar with Van Helsing's leaps of intuition and logic, Jinette could only shake his head, viewing the man who pulled him along with a mixture of confusion and alarm. The hunter sounded and looked like a mad man, as he walked he watched the brooding shape of Tintern with the grim expression of a feral animal. Van Helsing didn't appear rational in any sense, but as Jinette, too, peered through the gloom at the Abbey he noted again all of the windows that pockmarked the upper story of the structure and noticed for the first time that they were all shuttered tightly closed. Every last one of them.

tbc


	6. Bogey Man 6

Rating: PG13  
Pairing: Carl/Gabriel, not a slash pairing, but a deep friendship  
Series/Sequel: A new story, it is able to stand on its own

**Summary: The secret of Tintern is discovered, and it's worse than expected**

**Notes: I should mention here that though my Abbey's name is Tintern, it is not meant to be the actual Tintern Abbey that exists in England. Any similarity of name or locale in this story with actual existing locations is purely coincidental. **

Warning: Aspersions against the Church of Van Helsing's time (which I feel are merited); some violent concepts though not graphic

Disclaimer: I don't own anything (sniff), but I do like to play

**Feedback**: For all of you who followed the past stories, I hope that you find this story equally as interesting if not more so! Your reviews and suggestions are, as always, deeply appreciated! Due to Fanfiction rules I am unable to thank you in depth but I would like to say thanks to reviewers **Toto3****Gnome****Curious Dream Weaver****Nikoru Sanzo****Luthien****SeaDragon68****Chibi-Kaz**

_And thanks to my muse the Archangel Gabriel, patron saint of the written word._

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What happens to an animal that is tortured and terrified for a long period of time, who learns that the only relief from torture is to find and remain in the very blackest darkness where not even the slightest light can pierce. And, when driven by hunger and madness, what kind of thing eventually comes out of the darkness?

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**Bogey Man-6**

The camp that Van Helsing and Jinette made outside of Tintern's walls was cold and uncomfortable. Without discussing it, they placed their bedrolls close together, within touching distance of one another. As dark as it was, even lying with only inches separating them, each registered the other as a slightly darker shape in the overall blackness. Behind them, they heard the creak and groan of the tall sycamores, their boney branches rasping as they rubbed causing more leaves to fall in a spiraling dance to the cold ground. The grass all around them formed a pocket of still air into which the wind only occasionally dipped like a hesitant swimmer sticking a toe into a pond of water. Aside from these noises of insensate nature, only the sound of the two men breathing broke the stillness.

Despite the autumnal cold, Jinette was aware of a trickling bead of sweat that ran over his skin, raising gooseflesh in its wake. He blinked often, breathed deeply, and was aware of both, even to hearing the sound of his own eyelids closing and opening. The ground beneath them rustled constantly as they shifted and the noise seemed outrageously loud. He wanted to remain still, but found it almost impossible. His body was telling him to get up, to defend himself or at the very least to run. It was like a vicious itch that could be ignored only so long before the body insisted on relief and scratching became autonomic. When his hand jerked of its own accord to the knapsack that he rested his head on, questing for the small can of lucifers hidden there, he almost shouted when Van Helsing's hand settled over his, pulling it back down to the ground.

"You can see in the dark?" Jinette whispered, frowning slightly as he squinted at the other man.

"No. I've been fighting the same urge, it wasn't hard to guess you were too and then to realize what you were about to do."

"Hmph," Jinette sighed. "I would have found it more comforting if you had said you _could_ see."

The dried grass rattled like dice in a cup as Van Helsing shifted, letting go of Jinette's hand to roll over from his side onto his back. His voice was deep and steady and the Cardinal drew a measure of unexpected assurance from it. "Your senses can lie to you, especially in the darkness. It's better not to rely on them too heavily."

"You use this reasoning on your missions?"

"Yes. It comes in handy."

"I should imagine," Jinette murmured, grateful for something else to think about besides his own thoughts. "Have you always done this?"

Another rustle that Jinette interpreted as a shrug, and then, "I think so. At least for as long as I can remember."

"Ah, your memories."

"Yes, those. I'd think you'd be well used to hearing about them; it would be hard to forget my constant quest for them."

"I have not forgotten, my son," Jinette reproved Van Helsing quietly. "I would give you the information you seek if it were at my disposal. I have no wish to see you struggle for it."

"Still, it has come in handy for you and the Order," Van Helsing muttered, then grunted as Jinette swatted him smartly.

"If it has come in handy for us, so has it suited your ends as well," the Cardinal said sternly. "Your life is not easy, I have never claimed the work we ask of you is easy—neither to accomplish nor on your heart. But I think that you must find some comfort in it, in protecting those who cannot protect themselves, or you would not do it."

Van Helsing considered the cleric's words. "I think you're right-though it pains me to admit it," he said with ill grace before turning his face to the other man. "Why do _you_ do it? Why not a comfortable fat diocese or even retirement in some snug cottage? Or do you have aspirations higher than the Monster Squad? Maybe His Holiness Jinette?"

The hunter's questing probes were met with a hearty chuckle as Jinette forgot his fears of the dark and rolled over onto his back to stare up at the moon. It offered no light, no comfort, but knowing it was there as a constant in the darkness—that helped.

"Not His Holiness, then," Van Helsing mused. "And no retirement. Do you plan to serve until you drop in your tracks? I'm sorry to tell you, but as busy as the labs are, and as often as people come to visit you, it might take some time before they know you're dead."

Another soft chuckle from the prelate was barely audible, followed by a rueful sigh. "Si, I think you are right."

Van Helsing frowned at the resignation in the other man's tone and rolled up onto his elbow, cradling his cheek in his hand as he extended one toe to nudge Jinette's leg. "

"Why did you come on this trip? You could have sent one of your bookish monks, or even had Carl come in your stead."

"Is it so odd that I should wish to be away from my office and the labs for a short time?"

"Yes."

Jinette huffed at the absolute conviction of Van Helsing's affirmation. "You have a great deal to learn about dealing with other people, Van Helsing."

"I don't get a lot of opportunity for chit chat while I'm hunting down monsters. If you want polished manners, get someone else to do the hunting and I'll have more time to study up on etiquette."

Jinette rolled up onto his elbow as well, so close to Van Helsing he could hear the man's breath whistling through his nostrils. "Are you always so difficult? Or are you being contentious to take my mind off Tintern?"

"Both. Is it working?"

Jinette blinked, then chuckled, his laughter deepening as he heard Van Helsing's own quiet laughter. It felt odd to be lying in the tall grass, surrounded by evil, laughing with Van Helsing. The conversation, the closeness, even the sassing was something that he had not had the pleasure of in a very long while. It occurred to him that if anyone could understand that, it was the man currently across from him now. Somehow, though their lives were very different, they understood one another very well.

"I came on this trip because as you said earlier—I have cut myself off from everything except my work. I cannot lead the Order if I do not understand what its members go through. How can I ask you to go out to do what you must if I am unwilling to leave my office?"

"Ah," came the soft, thoughtful exhalation, then, "You could have chosen an easier first mission for yourself."

Jinette shrugged. "At the time, _this_ sounded like an easy mission. I am most disappointed that it is not."

"Cheer up," Van Helsing advised him as he flopped back down, pulling his hat down over his eyes. "At least you don't have to bring back a live monster. You just have to try not to go mad, be killed, or get eaten. Meantime, get some sleep. Pleasant dreams, Your Holiness."

Jinette sniffed as he settled as well. "I think I was too easy on you with only a week in Hell."

For a moment, both men were still, each alone again with his thoughts. Jinette chewed his lip, a frown upon his face that slowly eased into a small smile when he felt the hunter shift slightly so that their shoulders were pressed together. Drawing comfort from the contact, the Cardinal closed his eyes, leaving the dim moon above to watch the night's shadows alone.

* * *

Dust swirled upwards in a small whirlwind along Tintern's main corridor, each gritty particle jerking and rushing along a preset path that carried it higher and higher. More dust and debris joined their fellows in a mad dance whose erratic steps led the cloud up the stone stairway to the second floor. In the shadows that nested in the corners, a noise like a large animal panting started up, followed by small whimpering noises that were both distressing and frightening. The noise grew as the whirlwind did and the whimpers became a continual undulating moan that made the hackles rise and the pulse race. Doors flew open with loud echoing bangs as the wind passed and the contents of each room took to flight, crashing and twisting about one another, slamming into the ceiling repeatedly before dropping to the floor in tattered fragments as the disturbance passed. The wailing noises were growing louder and now there were frantic screams as suddenly the whirlwind blew apart and every window on the second floor flew open violently, shattering the glass and tearing the shutters from their moorings. 

In the meadow below, Van Helsing and Jinette jerked upright, their eyes immediately going to Tintern as a howling like maddened animals shrieked from the opened windows.

"What in God's name," Van Helsing growled.

"Not God," Jinette answered shortly as he rose to his feet, pulling from his robes a small battered book bound in black leather. He fumbled with it awkwardly, its worn cover slipping in his sweating palms before he took a firmer hold and opened the volume to the bookmarked page. In the darkness, he couldnt' see the actual page, but just having his hand on the smooth paper recalled the words to his thoughts and calmed his nerves. In a firm loud voice he began to recite the prayers of protection, calling upon God to halt the demons and with each word the howling grew louder and objects were expelled from the gaping windows, sailing through the air for great distances before slamming to the ground. Jinette continued his exhortations, despite a continual rain of missiles moving so quickly that if any had hit him they could have broken his bones. He signaled for Van Helsing to join him in his prayers and the hunter did so, though his responses were hesitant and wary. This continued for several moments until from out of the windows a great tide of black fetid liquid belched outward and then suddenly the noise and furor stopped. Items still airborne dropped to the ground and for a few moments the air was filled with fluttering pages. Then, silence returned to the meadow.

Van Helsing set his jaw as he began to walk towards Tintern only to be stopped by Jinette's firm hand on his shoulder.

"It is not safe, my son," the Cardinal murmured.

"There are people still in there," the hunter growled. "You heard them."

"I heard the screams of the damned. Whether or not they can be helped remains to be seen, but we will not help them by joining them in their state. It is better to wait…."

"Wait! Haven't they waited long enough?"

"Wait." Jinette interrupted firmly. "Until light and Carl arrives. We will then make our plans. Until then, we will stay here and wait."

Van Helsing chafed at the restriction but he allowed himself to be pulled back to their camp site, though he spent the rest of the night sitting bolt upright, watching Tintern's darkened windows.

* * *

Carl had enjoyed his evening with the villagers of the last farm. They had been more than happy to stable the horses for a moderate fee and had thrown in a bed and dinner for Carl for free. The bed had been a lovely soft thing with lots of goosedown pillows that were almost sinfully cozy. The only cloud in the whole thing was when he awoke in the morning and had had a good stretch he realized that he would have to leave the farm (and it's comfortable beds) and once again ascend the cliff to Tintern. It was ironic that what he had so looked forward to while in Rome should now be the very last thing he wanted to do. 

Two hours of steady travel on foot saw him once again approaching the base of the cliff and steeling his nerves for the climb. It had been one thing to deal with those awful feelings while he was with Van Helsing and Jinette—either one of them could be counted upon to send any type of bad thing packing or at the very least, give it as good a scare as it was giving them. But to go up there on his own? Carl bit his lower lip as he took the first hesitant step on the trail upwards. What if he had to go all the way to Tintern on his own?

Then, Carl roughly shook himself. He was behaving like a child! He _knew_ what was happening—Tintern had housed artifacts of evil for generations and the energy from those items had built up to fill the air in the immediate vicinity with a negative charge that acted upon humans like a large dose of panic. It was instinctual, autonomic, and couldn't be helped. But knowing that, he should have been able to control and rationalize his reaction to the panic instead of cowering before it like a rank amateur. He was panicking, he knew the cause, he could control his reaction. Simple. Still…

With an effort, Carl forced down the first reaction to his inner command to relax—the reaction being a rather loud and definite inner voice reminding him he was an inventor, **_not_** a field agent, and no amount of fast talking makes an eagle out of a pigeon, _especially a_ _dead, horribly mutilated pigeon!_ A firm resolve thrust the internal shrieking down to a manageable level and Carl forced himself to lift his eyes upward toward the summit, and immediately almost screamed. A dark figure loomed over him, it's vast shape blotting out the sun, covering the ground with a creeping darkness that seized his heart in a slimey, icy grip and….

Carl blinked, and the black haze of incipient oxygen deprivation receded enough for him to realize the dark shape above him was Van Helsing standing at the top of the path. His joy at seeing the hunter was so great that he took the first dozen steps upward without even realizing it. Once he had discovered this, he hastened his steps even more—he was afraid that Van Helsing would see him started on his way and then leave him alone to finish the climb. Carl desperately wanted to reach the top while Van Helsing was still watching over him. Silly, perhaps, but damnit, there it was!

Van Helsing watched Carl's hurried climb with a grim smile. He had guessed rightly—Carl was no more eager to climb up to Tintern the second time than he had been the first. He could hardly blame the friar; even a night spent on the edge of Tintern hadn't inured the hunter to the atmosphere that oozed from it like pus. If he were honest with himself, he wished that Carl might have stayed at the farm rather than brave the evil again, but there was a good chance that he would have to deal with that evil and Carl's clever brain might make a difference.

As he watched, the hunter noted that Carl's breathing was growing more strained and the expected ruddy hue of his face after the exercise of climbing had drained away to leave a pasty pallor behind. The friar's steps had been quick and sure to start with—no doubt so that Carl could reach the top while Van Helsing was still there—but they had slowed down to a bare crawl as he climbed higher. It was like watching the man strain to walk through molasses, each step dragging and pulling him back until his ascent was barely perceptible. Rather than blame the laboring cleric, Van Helsing felt a great hatred for the thing that had pitted itself against them and was now visibly assaulting Carl.

Quickly, the hunter descended the slope, angry that his own steps downward had a speed in them that he fully recognized as unthinking relief. His footfalls alerted the friar who looked up with a surprised expression that quickly segued to rueful relief as he stopped his progress and simply stood taking deep breaths.

"Sssorry about that," Carl stuttered with a shrug.

"Don't be. It took us the same way yesterday. Your body thinks it's saving you from a nasty fate—it actually says a great deal for your courage that you could force your way this far."

"Foolish courage," Carl muttered. "I'm more inclined to agree with my feet who want to be loping down that trail as fast as they can go."

"Tell your feet I'll give you a cookie when you finish the climb. In the meantime, hang onto my coat."

Carl blushed hotly but did as the hunter requested, latching firmly onto the warm leather like a lifeline. With that, both men set off once again with Van Helsing in the lead, pulling Carl along. Climbing was no easier on the hunter than before, but his anger was now sufficiently up to enable him to concentrate on that and they made good progress. When they reached the top and stepped into the tall grass, Carl immediately released Van Helsing and dropped down onto the ground, breathing heavily as he eyed the area with constantly roving eyes.

"Would it sound odd…if I said…that this perfectly ordinary looking place…was absolutely the filthiest hole I've ever been in?" Carl panted, flicking his gaze to the hunter before once more resuming his anxious surveillance.

"No. Not odd at all. Come on, get up. Jinette is waiting at our campsite."

Carl nodded reluctantly making a mental note of the strain evident in Van Helsing's short clipped words. Normally, the hunter was quick to answer Carl's whining with some good natured teasing but evidently he hadn't the reserves to do so now.

They set off toward the dark thick wood, entering it with dread on Carl's part and relief on Van Helsing's. Once well within the close press of sycamores, Van Helsing drew a deep breath and wiped a hand over his forehead. Carl noted the action and found it curious.

"Has something happened? Were we in danger out in the meadow?"

"No, no more than on the trail. Last night we made some discoveries that we'll explain to you when we reach the camp. Suffice it to say though that we're better off here, in the shadows of these trees, than we are on open ground."

"Eh?" Carl queried intelligently.

Van Helsing, with the relief of now walking in the shadows, found his spirits reviving and took satisfaction in elbowing the friar who squawked with righteous indignation.

The trees above them rustled in the passing wind, causing large bright-colored autumn leaves to fall twirling through the air to land on their shoulders before sliding down to join the thick carpet on the ground. Their footsteps over the dry leaves raised a muted rustling and crackling noise that was both familiar and unpleasant at the same time. Carl resisted the urge to attempt to tiptoe through the detritus in order to minimize the sound of their passage and he heard Van Helsing's snort.

"I realize that _you_ are feeling better, but have a little compassion for those of us not in the know," the friar grumped. "You say we're better off in this dark dank forest, which I must say I find very hard to believe, but you won't explain yourself. Given the fact that you seem to prefer the dark rather than the light, which is completely opposite of _everything_ that makes sense, I think a great deal of latitude is due me. After all, you're the one acting balmy—how do I know this awful place hasn't driven you right strictly round the bend and now you're planning on hacking me into little bits and burying the evidence?"

Abruptly, Carl stopped, looking up at the hunter with a nervous blink as he essayed an awful, wobbly little half smile. "Er…I got a bit carried away there. I mean…you would never…would you?"

Van Helsing stopped as well to look back at the friar, a speculative look in his eye. "It's a little late to be worried about that, Carl."

The friar's adam's apple bobbled and he emitted a faint "Eeep" before backing slowly away.

Van Helsing rolled his eyes then reached out to grab the friar who instantly waved his hands, striking ineffectually at the hunter.

'Nonononono!" Carl shrieked shrilly.

"Carl! It's alright! I won't hurt you! Calm down before you…." Van Helsing shouted, and then grunted as he caught the friar's dead weight when Carl succumbed to the inevitable mental overload and fainted dead away.

With a sigh, Van Helsing resignedly slung the other man over his shoulder and set off again. "Should have given him the cookie after all, I guess."

* * *

When Carl roused he found himself lying flat out on a travel blanket, with a pack behind his head. The pack was lumpy and he had a neck ache but he was so relieved to find himself alive he couldn't find it within himself to quibble over his discomfort. Sitting up gingerly, he looked about, determining that he had been settled down in a cleared spot just beyond the wood. All around him, the tall sunny grasses bent and waved, obscuring his view of the surrounding area. With some trepidation he forced himself to sit up and then to rise, immediately spotting Jinette and Van Helsing standing a little way apart. The two men were looking at a stone building about a half-mile distant and conversing quietly between themselves. Remembering now what he'd nearly accused Van Helsing of, Carl sighed as he reluctantly admitted that the label 'hero' wasn't in any way likely to be applied to himself. 

Pushing through the grass, Carl made his way to the other two men who turned to look at him with equal parts of relief and worry. Carl smiled weakly as he felt a hot blush heat his skin.

"Er, sorry about that. I don't usually do that, you know."

"I know," Van Helsing smiled, a little grimly. "Do you think you're up to helping us answer some questions?"

"Yes, I'm fine now," Carl said resolutely.

Jinette nodded and turned back to Tintern, moving a little away from the hunter to give Carl a clearer view. "We are of two minds as to how to approach the Abbey, though Van Helsing is fast persuading me to his thinking."

"Can't we just walk up to the door and knock?" Carl asked, and then shook his head in time with Van Helsing's own negative head shake.

"I don't think that would be a good idea," the hunter said grimly. "First, it's doubtful anyone would answer our knocking and second I'd rather not call quite so much attention to our entry. It's bad enough we'll have to manage it in the pitch dark."

"'Pitch dark'?" Carl whispered, eyes large upon the far structure. "Why in the dark? You said before we were safer in the shadows than the light and it didn't make any better sense then. Please, just give me all the information you have."

Over the course of the next several minutes, Van Helsing explained what had happened the previous night along with his own feelings on what they faced. Spoken aloud, they should have sounded ludicrous, but standing in the sun-drenched meadow facing Tintern, somehow neither of the other two men could find it in themselves to laugh. When he was done, Carl stood quietly, arms folded in a self-hug as he met Van Helsing's eyes with a grim foreboding.

Jinette folded his arms over his chest, his eyes directed downwards as he turned his back on the structure to face the other two men. "Perhaps it would help our decision if I gave you more information concerning why we are here. The brothers of this Abbey came into possession of a book of black arts that proved to be very powerful. The spells contained within it were the most powerful we have ever seen, each spell a demon unto itself, sealed into the book by the blood of an innocent victim." Jinette's grey eyes rose to Van Helsing's and Carl's as he licked his dry lips and swallowed the taste of disgust the words evoked within him. "To make the demons more powerful, the man who created the book took lives…in certain rites that I shall not describe here."

"Nono," Carl said weakly, a rictus of disgust distorting his mouth and making his belly clench. "We don't need to hear that. So…they found the book. What happened then? I'm guessing they didn't destroy the foul thing?"

"No, there is no way to destroy the book. To attempt it would only set the demons free. They were to bind the spells and then to study them, in the hopes that a way to permanently contain the evil could be found."

"It obviously didn't work," Van Helsing observed darkly. "Whatever they did resulted in their being locked in there with it. What do we need to do to seal that thing? And how do we keep what happened to the brothers from happening to us?"

Carl tapped his chin with a finger as he looked at the silent Abbey thoughtfully. "Well...I _do_ have an idea..." he murmured, "It should work...that is...I think it'll work...maybe."

Van Helsing manfully restrained the urge to seize Carl by the neck while Jinette only tightened his arms over his chest. He was used to Carl, he knew how the man thought and how ideas that might be questionable coming from other sources had a habit of working out with Carl. So he waited.

Carl paced the ground, keeping his eyes on Tintern as he began to mutter beneath his breath.

"Light's the key. Light...light...light. Why didn't the wizard who had the book have any problems? Why did the Abbey not have any problems with the thing until now? Why were all the windows shuttered and now they've been forced open..."

"I hope those are rhetorical questions," Van Helsing growled and Carl waggled a hand at him as he continued to pace.

"It all has to do with light. Light's the key."

"Carl," Van Helsing began irritably when Jinette caught his arm, a look of dawning comprehension coming to his face.

"It makes sense. Of course."

Van Helsing, the Order's premiere monster slayer, looked from one man to the other and considered throttling them both. "Would you care to explain it to me now? If it isn't too much trouble, of course."

Making an impatient huffing noise, Carl marched behind Van Helsing and caught his arms, pushing and pulling him into a position squarely facing Tintern. "You realize," the friar began sententiously, "after your little joke on me earlier, I should let you stew. I'm very put out with you."

"Carl," Van Helsing replied in the same tone, looking at the smaller man over his shoulder, "you put the cat _out_; if you're angry at me just say you're angry. And I thought you had a better sense of humor than that."

"I have a wonderful sense of humor. I simply can't understand _your_ idea of humor. You're the type of man who pulls a chair out from under someone who's sitting down."

The hunter snorted and shrugged. "What's your point?"

"Lord, give me strength," Carl rolled his eyes and gestured over the hunter's shoulder. "Now, look at Tintern. What's obvious about it?"

A good solid look at the structure got Van Helsing no closer to the answer than he had been.

"Don't you see? All of the windows have been broken open, but the door is still shut. Whatever is in there is _locked_ in, while the light is being forced in. The only reason for light is to illuminate something or somethings. The brothers, if they're still in there, have been driven mad by what they've seen and they are continually made more mad by what they are being forced to see now. The black magician who created the book contained it unharmed; the brothers even had it for a year and suffered no ill-effects until they started to study it. To do that they had to open it, expose it to light. Light is the key to unleashing the spells."

Van Helsing sighed and rubbed his face with one hand. "That's not good news, Carl."

The friar blinked, surprised. "It's not? I thought you'd be pleased to know what's causing this, how to combat it?"

When Van Helsing turned to face the two clerics his expression was dark and grim. "What you've figured out, Carl, is that we have to go in tonight, before the moon gets any brighter, and that we'll not only be fighting the demons of that book, but also an abbey full of mad monks that haven't gone down to the village for supplies nor harvested their garden for a long time. They've been shut inside Tintern with that thing and been driven to the point of being barely human. So Carl, since you're figuring out what's going on here...what happens to a pack of animals enclosed in a very small space who have been constantly tortured and threatened? And worse, what happens when the food runs out?"

Carl abruptly blanched white and Van Helsing nodded, his mouth set in a thin bloodless line.

"We're about to enter Hell on earth, and when we do we may have to kill everything in there in order to seal it off again."

tbc


	7. Bogey Man 7

Rating: PG13  
Pairing: Carl/Gabriel, not a slash pairing, but a deep friendship  
Series/Sequel: A new story, it is able to stand on its own

**Summary: The time has come to enter Tintern, and Carl uncovers a miracle**

**Notes: Vatican City is sometimes called The Holy See or See**

Warning: Aspersions against the Church of Van Helsing's time (which I feel are merited); some violent concepts though not graphic

Disclaimer: I don't own anything (sniff), but I do like to play

**Feedback**: For all of you who followed the past stories, I hope that you find this story equally as interesting if not more so! Your reviews and suggestions are, as always, deeply appreciated! Due to Fanfiction rules I am unable to thank you in depth but I would like to say thanks to reviewers **Indy****Ney-Nya****L-dhension****Silver Shadow****Woman of Rohan****Ashti****Hugh Jackman Fan, ****Curious Dreamweaver, ****Luthien, ****Seadragon 68, ****Eris, ****Jania**

_And thanks to my muse the Archangel Gabriel, patron saint of the written word._

* * *

**It's time.**

* * *

**Bogey Man-7**

The swollen sun seemed to take a long time to set that day, its fading rays burnished the tall meadow grass with a rich red glow that gradually deepened to bronze, and then aged bronze as the shadows tainted the pure color. All around the meadow and encompassing the Abbey, the shrouding trees creaked as their limbs danced on the rising winds and fall-bright leaves were released to fill the air before slipping to the ground.

Clouds, dark and thick with rain, had appeared on the horizon at noon—now as twilight settled over the meadow they hung over it, their interiors flickering with internal lightning. What little moon there was would be covered tonight; their nighttime journey to the Abbey would be quite dark.

Carl lay on his back in the cleared circle of earth watching the dark storm clouds and listened to the wind whipping over his small shelter of grass. He was supposed to be resting, but that was impossible given the fact they would enter the Abbey that night. It had taken everything he had within him just to come up the cliff, how was he to actually approach let alone enter the noisome center of the evil he felt now? Like a persistent headache, the influence of Tintern pounded at him making his stomach roil. He had given up wiping the greasy sheen of his sweat off his face, it always came back. It wasn't from the heat of the sunlight because his skin was clammy and cold; he suspected that he was quite pale—the blood that normally gave his skin its color had retreated inward to nourish and sustain organs deep inside. His body was certain he was under attack, it was trying to protect him and to give him the best fighting chance it could. Knowing that, Carl felt an immense guilt that he would betray his body by forcing it into Tintern.

The day had taken forever to fade and Carl had been left with too much time on his hands and a horribly vivid imagination. In an effort to stop the dizzying panoply of gruesome images, he forced his mind to concentrate on plans for a new weapon, imagining each component as vividly and with as much detail as possible. Each nut, bolt, solder, and tiny ratchet was recreated in his mind in exacting detail and the exercise worked, it kept his active brain busy. For a while. Now, as night and the encroaching storm settled over the meadow, it was as if the gathering darkness also obscured his mind's vision. He'd worked hard to overcome this without success, eventually he gave it up as hopeless and determinedly sent his mind off on another quest. He concentrated on memories.

* * *

In his mind's eyes, mercifully bright and sharp, he remembered another campsite, shared with Van Helsing outside the mountains of Carpathia. They had finished their job in Transylvania, Dracula was dead. So too was the last of the Valerious clan, her death weighed upon them now as they sat facing the bright fire, each lost in his own thoughts. 

Carl watched the popping embers of the fire flicker with jewel-like intensity as the deep crimson flames washed and lovingly buffed them to brilliance. He took comfort in the warmth and took particular pleasure in the fact that he was alive to enjoy it. He was alive, but Anna wasn't. He regretted the loss of her fierce, bright spirit; he hoped that she had found her family and was now happy with them once again.

They'd settled their camp for the night in the protective shade of the forest's edge, their branches crossed densely high overhead, blocking out the sky. Carl was sorry that he couldn't see the bright sky clearly, certain that it would be strewn with diamond-like stars. Perhaps, if he concentrated and squinted just right, he'd see her face among those clusters of light. That would be comforting.

Carl squirmed a little on his blanket spread over an ostensibly bare patch of ground that was proving to have quite a few unexpected sharp rocks in it. His bottom felt them all and registered complaints over each, and he was reluctantly admitting to himself he'd eventually have to get up to find some way to rectify the problem when a noise from the other man brought his eyes up.

Van Helsing rose from his seat further back from the blaze to approach, a thick piece of dense wood in his hand which he eased into the blaze. The fire greedily caressed the wood, extending its flickering fingers rapidly to embrace the man's fingers as well.

Carl blinked and then jolted forward, catching Van Helsing's arm and wrenching it away from the flames. Unresisting, the hunter allowed Carl to pull him down onto the friar's bedroll as his hand was hastily examined.

"It's nothing, Carl," he muttered as the friar tutted over the burn and began to root about in his saddlebag which was currently serving as the friar's pillow.

"It's bad enough, Van Helsing," the blond man said, keeping a firm grip on the hunter's hand so he couldn't pull away. Van Helsing had a nasty habit of hiding his hurts that Carl had every intention of breaking him of. "You know, you have no reason to punish yourself for Anna's death," he ventured, uncertain he was on the right track. "You did everything you could and more to keep us safe."

"Not enough," Van Helsing murmured, and then shrugged as Carl's blue eyes met his with an air of dismay. "She died at my hand, Carl, not Dracula's."

"She died at the _wolf's_ hand, Van Helsing. And you were not in your right mind at the time—her own brother tried to kill her when he was a werewolf. Would you blame Velkan as well?"

"No, of course not." The hunter's reply was quiet, but he watched Carl now with an attentiveness that suggested he had not thought of that line of reasoning before. Carl took reassurance from Van Helsing's docility and continued in a firm voice as he set about tending to the small burn on the back of two fingers. It really was quite small, but judging by the sullen redness it would blister soon and the hunter used his hands too much to take chances. It occurred to Carl that Van Helsing holding his hand to the bright flame was too much like watching Anna's body being consumed by the same fire and he shivered at the morbid thought. If Van Helsing was feeling that way, he'd best nip it in the bud right now.

"The people of Anna's village have a way of looking at death, you know. They see it too often to allow themselves to be bowed down by it. Instead, it's like another phase of life."

'_There's a brighter side to death?'  
_'_Yes, it's just harder to see.'_

The hunter's hazel eyes dropped to his hand in Carl's, watching the friar's capable ministrations. He found himself wishing Carl wouldn't be so quick to heal his hurts; the pain of the burns brought him a feeling of closeness with Anna that his memories alone couldn't accomplish.

"Van Helsing?" Carl paused in his task to gently squeeze the hunter's hand, feeling the firm flesh and the rough calluses against his own smooth palm. They were so different, even their hands proclaimed them as coming from worlds far apart. But he had to try to help the man. He'd known Van Helsing for years, at first at a distance then as his work became a staple of the hunter's arsenal they'd drawn closer. If Carl were honest, he suspected he was Van Helsing's only real friend now. If Carl didn't help him with his grief, who would? "Van Helsing? Anna's people...Anna...they're able to look at death that way because they give everything they have to living their lives. Every moment is lived to the fullest and for as long as possible. They hold their lives close, fiercely, and accept everything it has to offer."

'_I'm sorry you have to carry this burden.'  
_'_On the contrary, I would wish for it no other way.'_

"You fell in love with her, didn't you," Carl murmured, his voice a calm understanding statement. "Did you tell her?"

Van Helsing's eyes closed and his worn face grew still as he remembered the last time he had seen Anna alive. He remembered the warmth of her, the taste of her mouth, and the light in her eyes.

"Not in so many words...but she knew," he said, and a small smile tipped one corner of his mouth.

"Aahh," Carl smiled and squeezed Van Helsing's hand again. "Then take a page from her book—do what you need to do, what needs to be done to make the world a better place and know that when the time comes, she'll be there to take you home." Van Helsing's eyes opened and he met Carl's gaze with a question in them, the friar smiled and nodded. "Yes, I'm positive of that, so you can take it as gospel. After all, I'm a man of the church, I know about these things."

A soft light came to Van Helsing's eyes then, and _both_ corners of his mouth turned upwards. "Yes, you would, wouldn't you?" he admitted and his fingers curled gratefully about Carl's.

* * *

"Carl? It's time to go." 

A firm hand shook Carl's shoulder and the friar started awake, uncertain where he was, half expecting to see the flickering firelight and to feel the sharp rocks digging into his back. Instead, he saw only blackness and felt the oppressive weight of it pinning him like a bug.

"Van Helsing?" he asked and groped outwards, gasping when his hand was caught and he was abruptly pulled up to his feet. He swayed and was grateful for the sold bulk of the hunter as Van Helsing steadied him.

"Are you awake? I have some water...here..."

Carl's hand was gently pulled from its mooring on Van Helsing's sweatered chest and a flask was pressed into his palm. Reflexively, his fingers curled about it and he brought it to his mouth, gulping down the tepid water with a grimace. It tasted terrible, but it served to wake him up and he used a second gulp to rinse his mouth out, spitting it out to the side.

"Better?"

"Foul stuff," Carl answered, relieved that his voice was clear and firm. "When was the last time you put fresh water in that flask?"

"In Transylvania, three weeks ago," Van Helsing said and Carl shuddered and spat again as he heard the hunter snort with amusement before turning away.

Carl hurried after him, the hunter's broad back only slightly darker than the surrounding gloom. "Three _weeks_! Are you trying to poison me?" he huffed and spat again.

"It woke you up, didn't it?" Van Helsing retorted. "Besides, you were the one who was supposed to look after the supplies."

"Poisoning seems a rather harsh punishment for forgetfulness, Van Helsing!"

"I'm in the business of punishment," the hunter's voice had a grim amusement to it that made Carl blink, "if you want forgiveness ask Cardinal Jinette to bring you your water next time."

A huff of air and a sudden warmth at his side informed Carl they had joined Jinette who had apparently be awaiting their arrival. The Cardinal's unexpected presence made Carl start violently and once again he felt Van Helsing's hand on his arm, steadying him with a firm pressure.

"Erm...it's very dark...," Carl observed as he peered in what he hoped was the general direction of Tintern. "I know you said we had to do this in the dark...er...I mean, go to Tintern in the dark, but isn't it a little _too_ dark? How are we supposed to see what's coming?"

The hand on Carl's arm was urging him forward and he reluctantly allowed it though it took an act of will that made sweat pop out on his chilled skin. As they waded through the tall grass, coming ever closer to the Abbey, Carl cleared his throat noisily and patted at his robe front, feeling for the hidden pocket. If he was going to go into Tintern, he was going to stack the odds as much in his favor as possible. It occurred to Carl that as a man of God, he had best appeal to a higher power for help in that direction. His questing fingers fumbled through the various items in his pocket, feeling each in turn before discarding it and moving on.

The three men had covered quite a bit of the intervening ground towards Tintern and his reticence was approaching panic when Carl gasped with relief as his fingers closed on the item he sought. Holding tight, he pulled it from his pocket then uttered a short sharp cry as a bright white light spilled from his fingers, illuminating the three of them and the meadow about them within a ten foot diameter.

Van Helsing immediately whirled about, his face plainly visible and plainly angry as he grabbed for Carl's hand and then paused.

"I...i...it's not a mmmatch...," Carl gasped and opened his palm to display the source of the light—a plain string of wooden rosary beads terminating in a rough, well-worn crucifix. The soft glow of light spilled over the three men, touching and surrounding each, illuminating their gaping amazement and wide dark eyes.

After several seconds, Jinette and Van Helsing raised their gaze to one another and each in turn felt within their own pockets. Van Helsing regularly carried a watch chain with the sigils of the major religions of the Order upon it; during the return from Transylvania, in one of his darker moments, he'd put it into his vest pocket. As it emerged into a view, a soft blue light spilled from his fingers that changed rapidly to a bright white light. An instant later, Cardinal Jinette's hand joined theirs, his silver rosary adding to the nimbus about them.

"Why?" Van Helsing asked, raising his eyes to the Cardinal's.

Jinette licked his dry lips with a tongue that felt like sandpaper but his voice was calm and assured. "It is the light of God. In the face of evil, God's light shall be revealed."

Van Helsing shook his head, his fingers curved over the chain in his hand, touching and rubbing the sigils. They weren't hot but they glowed like white flame.

Carl nodded slowly, speaking thoughtfully. "There aren't any crucifixes about the Abbey. No sign of anything related to God."

Van Helsing's attention returned to Carl, he had seen the light of discovery in Carl's eyes too often to dismiss the soft musing words now. He responded to the question in Carl's voice, though he wasn't sure where Carl was going with his reasoning. "If they didn't want Henry to raze the Abbey like he did the original Tintern…."

"But that was five centuries ago. There would be no need to avoid such a thing now. True, I'm not expecting the Rose Window or a twenty foot stone crucifix, but there's _nothing_."

Van Helsing's frown deepened as he watched Carl's pale face. "Maybe they're inside? They wouldn't want to advertise themselves as a church, not if their sole purpose was to study artifacts."

"Maybe, but I doubt it," Carl said firmly. "I believe that evil shuns the sight of God. I don't believe this awful miasma of evil could be so powerful in the face of God. What if there _aren't_ any icons inside? What would happen if we brought them with us?"

The hunter blinked, then shook his head. "Carl, what are you hinting at?"

"I'm not _hinting_," Carl huffed. "The bible talks about the light of God smiting Evil—now true, the 'light' is usually defined as the 'word' of God, but suppose it was defined literally. What if you took a religious icon into a place of absolute evil—would it create a light that would illuminate the darkness and hold back evil?"

"But this place wants light…."

"Not God's light!" Carl threw his hand up at the hunter, quelling his dubious retort, and then turned to Jinette excitedly. "No icons, no religious sigils at all—maybe the evil is as powerful as it is _because_ there is nothing to battle it."

"Carl, the monks here have worked in the service of God for centuries."

"Something has happened, something's changed," the friar said and looked up at the dark bulk of Tintern. They stood at the edge of the courtyard, just outside the Abbey walls. By the light of the crucifixes he could now clearly see the sad weed-infested remains of the large garden—the late vegetables and fruits had been left to wither and rot, their pungent scent was heavy in the air and made the friar grimace in disgust. "For some reason, they locked themselves in there—with that thing..."

"Carl," Van Helsing started patiently, and then paused as his own gaze turned to Tintern and studied it.

"Look at us," Carl urged, "We have to drag ourselves toward it—how can they stand to be there? Why aren't they jumping from the windows? Even mad, their bodies should be driving them to escape. Instead, they've stayed in there all this time."

"They're mad, they cannot help themselves, they may not even recognize the windows or doors as a way to escape," Jinette replied but he too looked worried.

Carl shook his head as he gestured at the Abbey, his arms coming up to cross over his chest. "No...no," he said calmly though his face was porcelain white in the bright light. "They knew—remember the shutters? Someone closed them—all of them, sealing themselves inside. That's not the work of a brainless animal.

Van Helsing considered this, and then looked up past the Abbey to the sullen sky above them. The storm clouds had been gathering all day, occasionally they would see a sheet of lightening illuminate the interior of the clouds and a dull boom would follow. The thunderheads had sunk much lower and the air was heavy with the promise of a violent storm with plenty of lightening. He'd spent the day worrying about the light of the storm and how it would affect Tintern.

His gaze dropped down at the chain in his hand, rubbing the medallions, feeling their weight and the watching the light flow through his fingers like water. With contact, he felt the persistent clawing panic within his mind and guts subside, not completely, but enough that he could take a deep breath that didn't rattle within his chest.

"We still have a job to do. Carl, you believe that this light will hold back the evil?"

The friar shrugged, pursing his lips. "It's only a theory..."

Van Helsing smiled then, a genuine smile that crinkled his eyes and made them light up. "I trust your theories better than most men's facts. So, we'll assume you're right."

"Oh," Carl breathed and an almost shy smile curved over his mouth in turn. He watched Van Helsing reattach the chain to his vest and then belatedly secured the rosary to his own belt, looping the beads so that it wouldn't slip off.

Jinette did the same as he watched Van Helsing check his weapons. He was not surprised when the hunter handed one of his miraculous tojos to Carl, and then held one out to Jinette.

"You'll need this," Van Helsing said.

Almost apologetically, Jinette shook his head. "No. I cannot injure the men inside."

Van Helsing paused to fix the Cardinal with a steady stare, when he spoke his voice was emotionless. "And if they're not 'men' any longer?"

"All the more reason not to harm them—they deserve our pity, not death."

Van Helsing closed his eyes as he fought down the urge to give verbal release to his frustrations and fears. It took several moments before he could master himself enough to meet Jinette's gaze again and to speak without anger in his voice.

"You've sent me out often enough to kill monsters who were once men. How is this any different?"

Jinette's blue eyes were cold and they held Van Helsing's heated gaze, quenching it. "The monsters you were sent to deal with had killed others. They were known to embrace evil. We know nothing of the men inside and I will not act as their judge until I know better."

"Then you must stay here. The men that these monks were are gone—they may allow us to walk among them or they may attack us, but we have to be prepared for either."

"Van Helsing, these are men of God, no matter what has happened to them they were good men. I cannot say that I will not kill them and then allow you to do so."

"Your Grace….," Van Helsing began and then stopped, shrugging. "All right, I'll do whatever I can to not harm them. But if it's a choice of their life or one of ours, I'll do what I have to do. Agreed?"

"I have faith that we will find some way to avoid bloodshed," Jinette replied firmly.

The hunter only shook his head and turned toward Tintern. "Fine. Stay here, wait for us. Come on, Carl," he growled and set off. He'd taken a dozen steps when he stopped abruptly. Not turning around, he sighed, and then spoke. "Your Grace?"

"I am coming with you. You'll need my assistance."

"Of course," the hunter murmured meekly, although unseen by the other two men he rolled his eyes to heaven and thought longingly of his dart gun.

tbc


	8. Bogey Man 8

Rating: PG13  
Pairing: Carl/Gabriel, not a slash pairing, but a deep friendship  
Series/Sequel: A new story, it is able to stand on its own

**Summary: Tintern is broached**

**Notes: Vatican City is sometimes called The Holy See or See**

Warning: Aspersions against the Church of Van Helsing's time (which I feel are merited); some violent concepts though not graphic

Disclaimer: I don't own anything (sniff), but I do like to play

**Feedback**: I was recently cited by Fanfiction for replying interactively to reviewers within body of the story. My story "**Standards**" was removed by Fanfiction from this site for that reason. Due to Fanfiction rules I am unable to reply to your reviews in depth as I have in the past, but I would still like to say thanks to reviewers **Eris, Jania, Indy, Toto3, Nikki, Silver Wolfess, Curious DreamWeaver, Gnome, Woman of Rohan, SeaDragon68. **I hope that you enjoy this new chapter!

_And thanks to my muse the Archangel Gabriel, patron saint of the written word._

* * *

**Bogey Man-8**

Tintern's door was made of hard, close-grained dark oak with an old-fashioned latch closure—it was a very ordinary door with a centuries old history of solid dependability to it. It should have instilled confidence—it should not have been breathing. The thick plank expanded and bulged outward, then retracted to become concave, despite its movement, the latch remained firm and secure.

The vestibule that lay just inside Tintern's portal was thick with a heavy black darkness. Dust lay deep on the plank floor, occasionally stirring as if moved by an errant current of air or invisible feet to rise and curl about the solid stone walls. Whether by illusion or reality, the stones of the walls shifted in their mortar with ominous grinding noises as if they were readying themselves for action. Over all, there was a feeling of watchfulness, unblinking, thoughtful, waiting.

Abruptly, the darkness about the door thinned as a cold grey line sliced into the gloom, outlining the door frame before stabbing inward. For a few seconds the door shivered and the motions of breathing sped up as though the wood itself was in pain. The lock rattled hard, shaking so that the centuries-old iron groaned and shrieked. Seconds passed, and then the wood about the lock gave with an explosive retort, spewing the solid iron lock and latch backwards into the dark with the speed of a bullet to impact and embed itself in the stone wall opposite. Tintern's door slammed open, striking the wall behind hard enough to fracture the panel down its length.

White light flooded the darkness, illuminating the violently swirling clouds of dust that were created by the grinding stones of the walls. It appeared as if Tintern would destroy itself as its walls protested the light forced inwards.

From without, a dark figure appeared and set a boot inside Tintern's doorway and the noise and motion of the walls stopped.

"Oh…I don't like _that_!"

**…**

Van Helsing looked back at Carl with a raised eyebrow—he could never tell if Carl was attempting ill-timed humor when he said things like that or if he really meant what he said. Either way, it had a habit of making the hunter roll his eyes at his partner.

"Stay out here," he sternly admonished at the waiting clerics, paying particular attention to Jinette, before turning back to the waiting darkness. Carefully he took a step inside, raising the hand holding the chain of religious icons aloft to light the way.

Immediately the air was filled with shrieks as what felt like a large hand grabbed Van Helsing's wrist, twisting it viciously as something yanked at the dangling chain, attempting to pull it from his grasp.

Van Helsing heard Carl's cry of astonishment as the hunter was yanked into the air by his imprisoned wrist, but he couldn't spare any thought for his companions. Instead, he wrestled with his invisible attacker, attempting to grasp some part of it and failing completely. There was nothing to catch, nothing to see, but his arm was being slowly crushed. He could hear his pulse pounding in his ears, could feel the bone bending, starting to fracture….

"In the name of God, I command you to depart. In the name of God—I **command** you to depart!"

Jinette's voice, full of hard accents and spitting rage broke over the hunter and with his words the hunter fell free to land sprawling on the dusty floor.

Despite Van Helsing's instructions, Carl lost his fear of the Abbey when he saw Van Helsing clutch his wrist and close his eyes with a grimace. The friar scuttled inside and knelt beside Van Helsing, touching his arm with gentle fingers.

"Let me see."

Van Helsing didn't open his eyes. "I thought I told you to wait outside."

"Well there doesn't seem much point to it now—we know they're home."

"Carl…," Van Helsing sighed and shook his head as he allowed the friar to take his wrist. "It's alright, just sore."

The scuff of Jinette's approaching footsteps announced that the Cardinal, too, had entered Tintern. He approached the two men, looking down at them briefly before raising his eyes again to look about. They were standing in a large plain vestibule; what furnishings there had been that might have made it less starkly forbidding were now smashed rubble scattered over the dark oak floor boards. Shuffling through the debris, Jinette toed a scattering of fragile straw that he identified as the remains of some late flowers picked by one of the brothers. The brilliance that had, no doubt, earned them a place of prominence when first picked, had dulled to a dusty brown.

"The brothers are still in hiding," Jinette observed. "At least we do not have to deal with them as well. If you are able, we should move now."

"I'm able," Van Helsing affirmed grimly and rose to his feet with Carl's unsolicited assistance. Once on his feet, the hunter gently pushed the friar back, and warily raised the chain of medallions once again to light the way. As the gentle light illuminated the swirling darkness, the assault did not renew; setting his jaw, Van Helsing drew in a deep breath and proceeded down the hallway.

The dust rose to coat their clothing and hair and muffled their echoing footsteps; after a few steps the hunter stopped, his head slightly tilted as he turned slowly to look back at Jinette with a raised eyebrow. Holding the Cardinal's gaze, Van Helsing stamped his foot twice on the wooden floor and closed his eyes in a grimace as they heard the sound reverberate in a hollow echo.

"There is a cellar below us," he said with a resigned sigh. If the monks aren't on this level, they're sure to have been driven down below. We'll need to explore it as well…."

"Explore? As in go down there? With them?" Carl asked carefully, wide-eyed disbelief upon his face.

"Unless you can figure out how to ensure they stay down there when we go after the book," Van Helsing said, watching the friar blink thoughtfully. The friar made no immediate answer, and the party moved on, deeper into the Abbey.

The vestibule was laid out in a rectangle, one side punctured by an open doorway leading into a sparsely furnished room. Van Helsing stepped into the chamber, grimly identifying it as a small reading area. An overturned table had its legs broken off, the thick spars lying among overturned books whose pages drifted over the floor like snow. There were three chairs, all of them piled vertically atop one another and then slammed into the far corner of the room.

Van Helsing raised the chain of religious medallions higher to light the desolate chamber more fully and started as white hot sparks burst from the medallions. In the instant of the flash, the three men saw movement above the over-turned table and turned towards it immediately.

Attached to the low wooden ceiling was a metal crucifix transfixed by a single nail. Carl made a sound of amazement and took a step toward it only to be grabbed hard and dragged back by the hunter as the icon began to slowly spin clockwise. The men stepped backwards as the spin became faster and the cross began to screw itself into the ceiling with a shrieking noise. From out of the solid wood a dark viscous liquid oozed like blood, flowing faster to fall like rain to the floor below as the shrieking noise grew louder.

"Get back!" Van Helsing shouted, shoving the two men toward the exit only to have the solid plank door slam shut in their faces.

The cross's spin was now so fast it was a blur. Its piercing cries as it ground into the wood were unrelenting like the cries of the damned. The dark, tarnished metal glowed, first a dull red, and then bright red. As it started to turn white-hot the cross abruptly blew apart, sending whizzing metal shrapnel flying through the room. Van Helsing whirled, shielding the other two men and grunted as he was hit again and again by the sharp metal, feeling it embed itself in his shoulders.

With the destruction of the crucifix, the shrieking noises stopped—the room was once again silent except for the groaning creak of the door as it swung slowly open.

Van Helsing slowly sank to his knees, his eyes and jaw tightly closed against the pain of the metal burning into his body. He heard the Jinette's voice rise in prayers of protection as Carl's hands touched his shoulders and began to check his wounds.

"I'll need you to remove your coat," Carl murmured, dropping to a crouch before Van Helsing, gently urging the heavy leather coat back from the hunter's body. Van Helsing allowed it; a strangled groan emerged through his clenched jaws as he felt the leather pull at and then slide off the embedded metal shards. A muted ripping sound came next as Carl tore the back of the hunter's sweater followed by a thoughtful silence.

"This is going to hurt," Carl said quietly. "I can see the shards, thank goodness, so I should be able to get them all. You were hit by four pieces, the largest is just under your left shoulder blade. I'm sorry, I don't have anything that will completely dull the pain, but I do have something that should help some…."

"Save your medicines," Van Helsing growled. "Just pull them out."

"You don't want _anything_ before I start? I know you're used to pain, but the metal is jagged—it's going to hurt quite a lot…."

"I can't deal with Tintern with my mind dulled," Van Helsing insisted, looking up to meet the friar's troubled gaze with a scowl. "Please, Carl. Just do it."

Carl nodded with a short, abrupt motion and rose to move behind Van Helsing as the hunter clenched his fists on his dusty thighs and closed his eyes.

The pain of the first extraction was horrendous, the second wrung a strangled cry from the hunter and he dropped his head as unwanted moisture welled from his eyes. He'd been hurt before, much worse than this, and had suffered far less. All about him, he could sense evil pressing in with a dark satisfaction that sapped his strength and his will to resist.

A soft, pliant warmth settled over his clenched hands and he heard a murmur in his ears. He couldn't recognize the words, but the voice was Jinette's and he felt the prelate's thin fingers pushing a metal form into his palm. He clutched it, pressing it hard into his yielding palm, and found it gave him strength. Opening his eyes, Van Helsing fixed them on the white light that lit his hand from within, clearly outlining bones, tendons and blood vessels. He opened his fingers slightly and the glow poured from the rosary, emerging through his clenched fingers to light the room. He murmured the name of the figure that pressed into his palm and closed his eyes again.

When Carl removed the third and fourth pieces of metal from his back, there was pain, but Van Helsing found it easier to bear. He caught his breath and nodded when Carl assured him the extractions were done.

"I want to wash the wounds with a mixture of alcohol and holy water," Carl said firmly. "It will hurt, but not so much as before. Alright?"

"Alright," the hunter agreed. He opened his eyes and raised them to meet Jinette's. The prelate was crouched before him, his eyes dark with pity that lightened as the hunter forced a rueful smile to his lips. Van Helsing opened his hand and lifted it to present the rosary to the prelate. "Thank you for this."

"You are welcome," Jinette smiled as well, taking the beads and once again hanging them from his belt. "Are you able to go on?"

"I'm able."

Carl looked up from his ministrations at the hunter's back and licked his lips before remarking quietly. "Your sweater is done for. I brought a change for you in my bag."

"_You_ brought a change?" Van Helsing started, turning his head to look at Carl over his shoulder only to have wad of cloth thrust at him. It tumbled heavily over his shoulder, falling into his lap. Van Helsing raised his eyebrows as he eyed the linen bundle that fell open to display the metal mesh shirt Carl had created.

"If you're going to insist on getting punctured, it might come in handy," the friar admonished as he settled back behind Van Helsing to finish dressing the hunter's wounds.

It occurred to the grimly rueful hunter that Carl was quite probably right.

Emerging from the reading chamber, Van Helsing finished cinching the metal vest tight under the approving eyes of its creator. In an effort to get the friar's mind into more productive channels, he jerked his head back at the open doorway.

"The cross…why didn't it glow like ours?"

Though Carl opened his lips to reply, it was Jinette who answered.

"Though a piece of metal may be shaped as a cross, that does not make it holy."

"Er..what he said," Carl muttered, then, "but why would that be here? Where did it come from? And we still haven't seen a true prayer station or any religious articles."

Van Helsing nodded as he peered into another deserted room. "I've noticed that. I've also noticed that I've twice raised the cross to light an area and twice I've been struck down. You were right, Carl. Whatever is here, it doesn't tolerate the sight of anything holy."

Carl made no reply; instead he chewed his lip as he nervously fingered the rosary hanging from his belt. In his mind's eye he reviewed the last attack, realizing that Van Helsing might have been killed. The Abbey's repulsions of the cross' light were growing stronger, more violent each time. The evil of Tintern was making a point abundantly clear—if they relied on God to battle it, it would destroy them in the most painful manner possible. Looking at his rosary, Carl wondered how such a fragile thing could hope to stand against the evil assaulting them. It seemed already that the light shining from the beads was less bright, as if suffocated by the darkness.

"Here's the stairwell to the second floor," Van Helsing's voice broke into Carl's thoughts, making the friar start violently. He had fallen a little behind the other two men while he had been lost in thought and he was grateful for the distance now as he recovered from his fright. They had walked through an arched doorway into a narrow hallway laid out in a horizontal rectangle. On the left end was a small confessional with space for a penitent and his confessor. On the other end was an open door where stairs leading upwards were plainly visible in the light. An arched doorway was placed in the middle of the far side leading deeper into the Abbey. Lifting his robes slightly, he scuttled after the other two men, pushing forward slightly to peer up the dark stairway.

"If this is the stair to the second floor, then the other stair must be further in."

Van Helsing turned away to go to the other doorway. Carl hurried after him, speaking quickly to cover the booming of his heart within his ears.

"You know, it's possible that there are only one or two stairways down into the cellar. If that's really where they all are, we might just be able to lock them down there."

The hunter's reply was delayed as they arrived at the far doorway to find it blocked by broken and overturned furnishings. A large heavy stone bench was wedged against the door as well and gave no signs of shifting however they pushed or pulled at it.

"Let's try this the hard way," Van Helsing said grimly and gestured the other two men back.

"Is this a good…," Carl began only to swallow his words and cover his head as Van Helsing once again thrust the chain of medallions at the blockage and its light flared. The results were instantaneous and loud as the debris was explosively blown through the door, breaking the frame and walls to rain down upon them. A yelp was forced out of Carl as a heavy body plowed into him that sent him sliding backwards over the floor to thump against a far corner before the heavy form settled over his, covering him from head to foot. In his ear, he heard the steady growled curses that identified the body over his as Van Helsing's. The din of destruction was incredible and more than once he felt Van Helsing jerk over him as he was struck by flying missiles.

An ominous whistling noise was their only warning before a tremendous weight struck the wall behind them and Carl heard the ominous creak of the floor boards before they gave way, sending himself, Van Helsing, and the stone bench plummeting down into the cellar and absolute darkness.

The instant they landed, Van Helsing rolled both himself and Carl to one side for several turns before a booming crash behind them announced the stone bench had struck the floor, embedding itself vertically into the broken floor and the earth beneath.

For a moment, they lay silent and still as the sounds of chaos faded and the clouds of dust settled over them like a thick blanket. Carl could feel the hunter's warmth breath gust harshly against his neck and he closed his eyes in thanks for it.

Their reprieve was of short duration. As they lay silent upon the ravaged buckled floor, the din of destruction was replaced by a quiet insistent noise that was difficult to place at first. Both Van Helsing and Carl stirred and lifted their heads, orienting on the noise in the darkness. It was drawing closer, and with proximity it became recognizable.

It was the sound of giggling, breathy, rising and falling, sounding more like a pack of wild dogs than anything human.

They had found the monks.

tbc


	9. Bogey Man 9

Rating: PG13  
Pairing: Carl/Gabriel, not a slash pairing, but a deep friendship  
Series/Sequel: A new story

**Summary: Carl discovers the secret of Tintern**

Warning: Aspersions against the Church of Van Helsing's time (which I feel are merited); some violent concepts though not graphic

Disclaimer: I don't own anything (sniff), but I do like to play

**Feedback**: More than anything else, you folks have kept this story going. I appreciate the time and trouble you've taken to read and review this story so much! It's a pleasure to hear from you and a very great honor to know that you enjoy what I write. I hope this new chapter lives up to expectations! My sincere thanks to reviewers Eris86, Gnome, Indy, Jania, Ashti, L-dhenson, Chibi-kaz, Curious Dreamweaver, TotofromKansas, Silver Wolfess and Woman of Rohan.

_Special thanks to my muse Archangel Gabriel, the patron saint of the written word._

* * *

**Bogey Man – Chapter 9**

All about them was the sound. It filled the space and ducked into the corners to ferret out and claim every last inch for itself. The terrible, high pitched, non-ending laughter wasn't human, couldn't even be called vaguely so. It rose and fell in cadence, like a running wave of yelps and barks. And, maybe worse, when it ended, Carl could hear what followedgrowling, snarling and a rambling nonsensical murmur.

He was afraid. He was a holy man—but so were they. God had forsaken them, why not him? Sensing his lifeline slipping, that small protection that his faith had afforded him, Carl grasped at it frantically. He'd _seen_ the light of God, he _had_.

But why had God forsaken the Abbey and these men, who surely had led far better lives than Carl himself?

"Carl?"

The friar started, his wildly skittering thoughts returning to the hunter with such awful gratitude that he felt his heart sink within him even as he welcomed the solid protection of Van Helsing. He was afraid, and while his faith in God was strong, he wasn't sure if his belief in his right to it was equally strong. In the end, he had more faith in Van Helsing's protection than in his right to God's.

They lay upon the broken floor, feeling it shift treacherously under them as the boards tipped and slid and they sank deeper into the welter. Their wild roll over the debris had resulted in the hunter on his back with Carl laying over him. Both men lay still, lest any movement bring the source of that laughter down upon them.

"This is no good," Van Helsing murmured into the friar's ear that was placed conveniently before him as Carl rubbernecked. "The footing beneath us isn't stable enough to stand upon. We need something to drive them back enough so we can get to solid ground."

"Drive them back?" Carl whispered, bemused. How could they do that? He could feel the press ringing them in.

"Carl!" Van Helsing's fingers bit into Carl's arms, summoning the friar back from his musings. He wished he could see the friar's face, his eyes. Carl had braved Dracula's castle and all the nightmares it contained, but this was different. These were men of faith, the same as Carl, and their dissolution to such a state was obviously having a profound effect upon the friar. "Carl!"

"What?" Carl shuddered, and then pulled his eyes forcibly downward to the closer, deeper blackness that he knew was Van Helsing. He hated that he couldn't see the hunter's eyes, couldn't draw strength and purpose from the assurity in them. The continual blackness was eating into his mind—he wanted light, needed it, and craved it.

"Light...," Carl whispered.

Van Helsing shifted slightly, and then cursed softly. "I dropped my watch chain. Do you still have your rosary?"

Unseen, Carl blinked and nodded, a little reluctantly. Yes, he was certain he still had his rosary. It would give them the light they needed, but at what cost? They were down in this foul pit now because of the light—three times Van Helsing had been struck down for shining the light of God into the darkness. Each time, the punishment had been worse. Now it was Carl's turn?

Van Helsing was shifting beneath him now, his hands on Carl's arms had slid to the friar's shoulders and he was forcing Carl upwards, separating them. The friar gasped, horrified, as he was forced away from the warm solidness of the hunter into the dark. For an instant he clutched at Van Helsing, trying to hug him close.

And then the light poured out from between them and the darkness became blinding chaos.

For an instant, Carl saw with absolute clarity, the ring of bodies about them. He looked into staring eyes that had mindless hunger in them set within bloodless faces with slack drooling mouths and yellowed teeth.

And then he heard their shrieks as they cowered back as a tremendous force struck Carl savagely, lifting and hurling him backwards. He felt the rosary being torn from his belt—it went one way while he was struck again and again and was thrown viciously across the room in the other direction, after the retreating monks.

Carl lay gasping, face down in the dirt. He felt as if his body were on fire. He had never remembered hurting so badly before and he would never forget the feeling. Never.

"Carl!"

He heard Van Helsing's shout, heard the sounds of the hunter being hurt—whether by the monks or by the evil of Tintern, he didn't know. He wanted to help, but he hurt so badly and he was so afraid.

"Carl!"

The awful pain in the hunter's voice brought the friar's head up with a snap. He could see the rosary, still shining, laying on the dirty floor a few feet from him. And beyond that—Carl bit back a horrified scream. Against the shadow-stained recesses of the cellar's high ceiling, Van Helsing was pinned, his arms were spread out from his sides as if he were nailed to a cross and he was bleeding profusely. The hunter was still alive, struggling to break free. Carl shook his head, his eyes wide and staring, he knew what was about to happen.

Slowly, as the wood of the ceiling creaked and groaned under the pressure, the hunter's body began to turn clockwise and a moan of agony was wrenched from his bloody lips.

"Carl..."

Carl scrabbled over the floor, feeling the dirt and splinters of it press into his bloody hands and knees but not stopping to heed the pain. His attention was completely fixed on the shining rosary. Above him, he could hear the hoarse cries of the man and the groans of the wooden ceiling grow louder as Van Helsing's rotations increased in speed.

He was only three feet away from the rosary...then two...then one. He reached for it, but as his hand hovered over the beads he froze. He couldn't make himself touch them, though he desperately wanted to help Van Helsing. If he touched the rosary, tried to use it to save the hunter, there would be retribution. He was certain of that. Against himself, against Van Helsing. Each time, the punishment was worse. Was the evil growing stronger? Was God forsaking them? He was a friar, a man of God, but so were the monks of Tintern and God had forsaken them.

Lying amid the dirt and foul waste that covered the planed wood floor, the rosary's light flared, and then dimmed.

A drop, like a hot tear, fell upon the back of Carl's outstretched hand and in the dimming light he watched it slide down between his fingers leaving a crimson trail behind. He wasn't certain if it was his own or Van Helsing's blood.

Abruptly Carl's hand darted forward and seized the rosary even as he rose to his feet. He was prepared for the punishment this time, he expected it. As his faith in the rosary's protection lapsed, so did its light.

His faith wasn't strong enough, but he still had faith in Van Helsing. Before the pain of his punishment hit him, before the rosary completely faded and he was once more engulfed in darkness, he threw the rosary at the hunter.

When the pain hit his body, Carl cried out and curled himself into a ball. The world was exploding; he heard it, felt the concussion of it slamming into him bringing with it the new darkness of blessed unconsciousness.

* * *

Van Helsing awoke to feel hands touching him, pulling his coat off, and then unbuckling the metal vest he wore while a non-stop nonsensical ramble filled his ears. The voice sounded angry and familiar. He wanted to slip back into unconsciousness but a gradual awareness of pain was building that would be impossible to ignore for too much longer.

A deep sigh escaped Van Helsing's lips as he opened his eyes to a blurry world filled with light and shadows. It took a moment to realize that he was lying face down on the hard floor. As he attempted to move, the hands returned to restrain him, pushing him back down with dismaying ease. Over him, he heard a sigh like his own, and then felt a light gentle pat on his bared shoulder.

"You have managed to get yourself hurt once again—you will have to remain still while I tend to your injuries. I'm surprised that you have managed to avoid being killed before this, though you might manage it this time."

"Not today, either," he assured Jinette as the Cardinal slipped a soft wad of cloth beneath his cheek and pushed his head down upon it.

"I'm pleased to hear that. There is still a job that needs doing, you know." Jinette's voice was querulous but his touch was gentle as he washed the blood from Van Helsing's back and then tsked over the deep bruises and patches of missing skin. "You are lucky you had Carl's vest on, it saved you from losing more skin."

"Erg! It feels like I'm wearing it on the inside of my skin."

"I can count each link's indentation on your back, but you still have some hide left. You have always healed quickly in the past, I'm afraid that will have to serve you now—Carl's pack held the medical supplies and that is gone now. I can help the pain some, but that is all."

"It's a start. How is Carl?"

The silence that extended with each passing second answered Van Helsing question and he gritted his teeth, closing his eyes. Carl had saved his life, quite probably at the expense of his own. He wouldn't leave the friar down in that black pit with the monks of Tintern.

Gritting his teeth, Van Helsing pushed himself up slowly from the floor, swatting away Jinette's admonishing hands. Gingerly, he rose to his feet and looked about him. They were in the ruined hall with the confessional and the upward-bound stairway. There were gaping holes in the floor, one by the wall where he and Carl had fallen through, and one before the arched doorway leading further into the Abbey. At his raised eyebrow, a humorous expression came to Jinette's taciturn face.

"Your exit from below was spectacular. I awoke against a wall and had barely a moment to look about when suddenly you came flying upward, through the floor to land at my feet. This came with you..."

Jinette extended his hand, opening his palm to show Van Helsing the brightly shining wooden rosary Carl had carried.

"I think he threw it at me...," Van Helsing sighed, taking the warm beads and rubbing them gently.

"No doubt that is why you emerged so explosively," Jinette sighed. "We must go down, to look for Carl."

The hunter didn't bother to answer; it was the course of action he had planned all along. Instead, he set about getting dressed again. The linen shirt was shredded but still serviceable. More importantly, the metal vest was still intact though the links were clogged with dried blood. He'd seen his own blood often enough that seeing it now barely made him hesitate before slipping the vest over his head and then cinching it tight. His coat was also in bad shape, but still serviceable and mercifully it still held his weapons intact. Jinette helped him on with it, a grim smile upon his face.

"What?" Van Helsing asked, one dark brow rose in bemusement. He found himself wondering what could possibly provoke a smile in these circumstances.

Jinette shrugged his smile widening. "It occurred to me—as often as you have been a thorn in my side with your stubborn refusal to yield, this has also been the downfall of the monsters you hunt. I had never thought before that I held something in common with the world's evil—until God saw fit to thrust you into my life."

"Hmph. You should be grateful."

"I do not deny that, Van Helsing. I'm grateful for _all_ the trials God sees fit to send me."

"Well next time you're thanking him for trials, send him my thanks as well. In the meanwhile, let's go. I'm anxious to see you in action with the good monks."

A very un-Cardinal-like sniff was his answer, but it was Jinette who first descended into the black pit to the cellar below.

* * *

Carl was aware of a rising and falling, like the gentle swelling and subsiding of a large boat upon the ocean. He didn't remember boarding, nor did he know where he was bound but he found the movement soothing and welcomed it. For some moments he hovered on the edge of unconsciousness before reluctantly tipping back toward wakefulness. It came with the price of pain and he wholeheartedly groaned his discomfiture. He wasn't one to suffer in silence—silence didn't get you anything whereas honesty often resulted in bed rest and meals brought to you on a tray.

Instead of sympathy, though, the soothing motions stopped and a loud querulous voice began spewing nonsensical phrases.

First it occurred to Carl that his first impression of being on a boat was, perhaps, premature. His second realization was even less welcome—if he wasn't on a boat, where was he? And why was the surface under his head heaving and roiling now?

Abruptly, the world tilted sideways and Carl yelped as his tender head slid sideways and landed upon the hard unforgiving ground. His eyes flew open and he felt panic explode within his mind and raise gooseflesh upon his skin because the world was utterly dark and he couldn't see a thing.

"My God, I'm blind!" Carl whimpered as he brought his hands up and waved them in what he roughly judged to be right before his nose without seeing anything.

"Nononononono, not blind...don't think so...don't know but probably not. Probably not. Funny that!"

Carl's waving hands instantly ceased their motion as he sucked in a breath and held it. Memory was returning and with it the absolute certainty that wherever he was, it wasn't a good place and it wasn't a good idea to be moving about or speaking. That was commonsense, a virtue he planned to wholeheartedly ascribe to if he lived through this.

Of course...it was true that being silent might keep him from getting any new injuries but it also wouldn't answer any of his questions. If he were going to become someone's lunch, he'd like to know whose first.

"Er...are you one of the monks here?"

A snuffling noise was his only answer and he began to wonder if he hadn't spoken clearly enough when a moist calloused hand abruptly dropped onto his face. He felt, in all honesty, that his shriek of pure horror was completely justified. If nothing else, it caused the hand to be withdrawn with alacrity.

Heedless of his injuries, Carl rolled onto his stomach and then to a sitting position, his hands outstretched and waving about. He discovered that he was close to a wall and scooted over to it with overwhelming gratitude. Once he had the solid surface at his back, he grit his teeth and extended his hands once again.

"Where are you? Who are you?"

"Questions questions...always questions. Always curious, not a very smart idea."

Carl blinked, orienting himself and his hands toward the sound of the voice. Tentatively he patted the air until the ends of his fingers touched the rough scratchy texture of cloth. He bit his lip against a startled cry and instead extended his reach, leaning forward to slide his hands upward until they encountered the boney bulk of what felt like a shoulder.

"Are you one of the monks?" he asked again, bracing himself for God knew what.

"Monkie monkie monkie, we're all monkies here. Genuflect, kneel, and stand...all day long. Tough on the knees!"

Frowning, Carl hitched forward slightly, so that he could get close his hand solidly upon the shoulder beneath. He wasn't being attacked, for which he was genuinely grateful. Now he found his natural curiosity emerging as he extended his free hand and carefully sought and found the monk's face. His questing fingers found a ratty beard and then rough skin. The monk made no move to avoid Carl's hand; on the contrary, he pushed his face forward and only closed his eyes so that Carl wouldn't inadvertently put a finger in them.

"I'm Carl," the friar said, keeping his voice soothing. "I came from Rome to visit. Can you tell me your name?"

He felt the monk draw himself up before saying with certain amount of pompous rectitude, "I am Brother Michael. I tend the books. There are no books left to tend so I tend the monkies instead."

"You 'tend' them?"

Brother Michael scooted closer, his rough voice taking on an eagerness that was both touching and alarming. "They get hurt—they hurt each other. If I can, I help the hurt ones. Not much I can do, but I do it any way. They don't bother me so I can go as I please. Place is in a state, though. Shouldn't be allowed."

"Why don't they bother you?" Carl asked. His hands had roughly mapped out the frail features of an elderly man with vast quantities of greasy hair. He had felt the raised ridges of what had to be old scars upon the Brother's face, most of which were about the eyes. He had a rough idea of why Michael went about the Abbey unmolested and why the dark didn't appear to hinder him.

Michael sighed as Carl's hands dropped away. "'Old Michael' they called me. No harm to anyone. They're used to ignoring me. I got good at going about unseen; I know the ways they don't. They didn't go where I did because of the dark, but dark never bothered me."

"You're blind." Carl said gently.

"As a bat," Michael affirmed gleefully. "Now all the monkies are blind and they don't like it, no!"

"No, they don't," Carl agreed grimly. He was coming to the realization that Michael had a number of infirmities that combined had served to protect him from Tintern's evil. The man was undeniably simple, either from whatever accident had taken his eyesight or from birth. His was a very straightforward world that obviously didn't trouble him overly much. As a result, the evil that he could neither see nor comprehend hadn't done much more than inconvenience him.

The cold touch of a questing finger startled Carl momentarily. He heard Michael catch his breath as if expecting rebuke and raised his own hand, groping for the Brother's before finding it. He brought the monks' hand back to his face.

"You want to know what I look like?" Carl asked with a smile that he knew the Brother could feel.

"Ahh," Michael sighed and scooted over the dirty floor so that he could be close enough to place both hands gingerly upon Carl's face.

"Why didn't you do this while I was unconscious?" Carl asked and raised his eyebrows as the Brother's questing hands stilled for an instant and the man replied with prim disapproval.

"Bad manners that! No excuse for bad manners. The Abbot taught me that when I was a boy—always ask first."

"Oh, yes of course," Carl hastily agreed and breathed a mental sigh of relief when the Brother's gentle touches recommenced. He sat silent, letting the monk map out his features until the other man was satisfied and his hands dropped. Then, "Brother Michael, I came with other men. My friends. Do you know of them?"

"Friends," Michael repeated with a wistful tone in his voice.

"Yes, friends. Van Helsing and the Cardinal."

Abruptly, Michael cackled, slapping Carl on the arm. "Cardinal? There's a shot in the eye for the Abbott!"

"The Abbott? The one who taught you..."

"Nononono! The Abbott _here_. Your Cardinal beats an Abbott any day. Serves him right!"

"You don't like the Abbott?"

Michael's cackling ceased immediately and for an instant Carl wondered if he'd offended the Brother again. "Michael?" A soft sigh answered him and he heard Michael settle back against the wall before speaking.

"I liked him alright...well enough...until he brought the book. Until he took away the crosses and opened the book."

Carl felt his mouth fall open as he stared into the darkness. "The Abbott..."

Michael huffed. "He's up there with it now, lording it over the monkies. He let the books be destroyed—he deserves a proper caning for that! Your Cardinal will see to that."

Carl settled back against the gritty stone wall with the feeling of having been clubbed. God hadn't abandoned the monks of Tintern after all. The Abbott had apparently forsaken God in favor of a new lord and he had dragged everyone in Tintern down to Hell with him.

tbc


	10. Bogey Man 10

Rating: PG13  
Pairing: Carl/Gabriel, not a slash pairing, but a deep friendship  
Series/Sequel: A new story

**Summary: Clues to Tintern's true evil are revealed. Nothing is what it seems.**

Warning: Aspersions against the Church of Van Helsing's time (which I feel are merited); some violent concepts though not graphic

Disclaimer: I don't own anything (sniff), but I do like to play

**Feedback**: I'm glad to hear that you enjoy Michael and that the interactions between the lead characters continues to work well. I hope this new chapter lives up to expectations! My sincere thanks to reviewers Chibi-Kaz, Ashti, Neynya, Curious DreamWeaver, Silver Wolfess, SeaDragon68, and Eris86.

_Special thanks to my muse Archangel Gabriel, the patron saint of the written word._

* * *

**Bogey Man – Chapter 10**

The cellar yawned before Van Helsing and Jinette, its still, uninviting air like that of a deep black pond whose depths held unknown consequences. Jinette felt the coldness of the place touch and cling to him, sapping his will and courage; in their place, though, he felt anger boil up instead. Evil had been allowed to make itself at home here; it ruled this place with an iron hand that struck down the presumptuous and the weak. He had spent his life protecting such people and he was damned if he was going to give way now.

He listened closely for Van Helsing's descent and when the hunter's feet thudded down onto the ground beside him, he reached out and caught his arm in a sure, hard grip.

"This time, we do things differently," Jinette said grimly at the hunter's murmur of surprise. God is with us, he will not forsake us unless we turn away from him. But there is nothing to be gained from ignoring what protection he offers in favor of bulling our way forward."

From the darkness a hearty snort was heard, followed by a sardonic growl. "You might have mentioned this sooner, you know. I'm not so used to bruises and the sight of my own blood that I'd be disappointed to skip a beating or two."

Jinette allowed the dark to cover a small smirk as he raised an unseen eyebrow at the hunter. "You have a tendency to march ahead, Van Helsing. While your courage is admirable, it makes it difficult to do anything else but follow in your wake. Rest assured, though, I have appreciated the wind block you have made thus far."

A soft grinding noise accompanied this bald-faced needling, then, "In that case, Your Grace, after you. I'm sitting this one out."

Jinette drew comfort and strength from Van Helsing's snarkiness—it was familiar in its unfailing presence. He accepted the protection the hunter offered at his back because he understood it as another gift of God. While the hunter might question his place in the Order, in the plans of their Lord, Jinette never had. He was grateful for the gift that had been bestowed on them and had gratefully made full use of it ever since. The fact that that gift came with an irreverent attitude and an all-too eager willingness to flout authority was, he suspected, a sign that God also had a sense of humor and wasn't above flaunting it. It was a small thing, a minor quirk, and one that Jinette could appreciate in his otherwise benevolent God.

He now looked to his faith as an old friend, and began to speak softly the prayers for protection and guidance. He repeated the words with care, appreciating the history and forethought of each as they passed his lips and he drew comfort from them. Beside him, he heard Van Helsing's breathing but the hunter stood in his place and made no effort to hurry him or to interrupt his litany. When Jinette finished, he sighed and crossed himself, hearing Van Helsing do the same before he leaned in, his breath warm against Jinette's cheek.

"So, now what?"

"Now we wait."

"Wait? Your Grace..."

"You are so anxious to move ahead to your next beating?"

A soft growl answered him, then, "I'm anxious to see Carl."

Jinette's disapproval eased at the admission and he patted Van Helsing's arm in the darkness. "I, too, am anxious, Van Helsing."

"You hide it well."

"You would prefer I wave my arms and pace about?"

"Might do you some good," Van Helsing murmured, just loud enough to be heard. "Might loosen up those knickers a bit."

Jinette's hand returned to Van Helsing, this time in an admonishing swat. "Your wish for a new beating is about to be granted," he warned. "You are not so fearsome that I would hesitate to chastise you, my son. Vigorously."

Beneath his hand, Jinette felt a small shudder pass through the other man and he raised his eyebrows at it before identifying it not as a shiver of fear but rather the quake of suppressed laughter. Jinette sighed as he rolled his eyes heavenward in silent suffering of the ongoing proof of His sense of humor.

In the silence of the moment, they heard the shuffling gait and the sound of wary, hesitant breathing that announced the monks were emerging from their hiding places.

"Now. Now would be a good time for that protection to manifest," Van Helsing said grimly as he turned, placing his back to Jinette's.

And, as if listening, the 'protection' did manifest—the light of the rosaries that were hidden in pockets spilled through the obscuring cloth in a blue glow. Despite the power of the radiance, its light was less actinic than the former white light of the rosaries but its intent was unmistakable.

"My God," Van Helsing breathed, fishing Carl's rosary from his pocket and holding it in his palm. He felt its warmth as the light pooled in his palm and lit the back of his hand from within.

"Apparently, you are in better graces with Him than I thought," Jinette sniffed. The Cardinal looked about in the new light, and a smile touched his mouth. "It also appears that the brothers will not risk the light. They have disappeared back into hiding."

"Probably waiting for the fireworks to commence," Van Helsing said as he, too, looked about him, fully expecting to be struck down at any moment. As the moments passed, however, no such retribution came and he breathed a sigh of relief as he allowed himself to actually see the grim dirty warren for the first time. It had all the signs of having been inhabited for a very long time. The dirt and refuse that were piled on the floor were noisome, but the sense of sadness and fear far outweighed the disgust the room evoked. The inhabitants of this pit had not asked to be consigned to it; they had done nothing to merit such a harsh and unrelenting punishment. He could sense that now and a deep sigh gusted through him. When Jinette's piercing gaze turned to him, he frowned and nodded.

"Though they have sunk to this level, and are dangerous, I don't feel evil in them. They run and hide from it—and while they might stoop to such evil as their situation has thrust upon them, they are not evil themselves. I cannot kill them."

Jinette looked pleased. "Then, let us look for Carl, and pray that he is still well."

Both men set out then, their progress was wary but determined. The evil of Tintern coiled all about them but it didn't strike, either due to the light that protected the men or because it waited to see what they would do next—possibly both. In any case, the respite was appreciated.

Their search was tentative, becoming harder as they unearthed grisly signs of what happened to the weak or injured in this place. Pathetic, gnawed bones lay half buried or hidden in caches about the room. When they made the mistake of disturbing one of these hordes, the evident owner emerged from hiding. He was clothed in a ragged robe, his tonsure long-since grown in, its unevenness lending a wild air to the ragged growth of hair that swung into the pale face from which pale bulging eyes stared at them. Snarling and screaming, the monk kept his distance, instead hurling debris at them with a poor aim.

Van Helsing stood at watch before the monk though to be truthful, he was grateful to be spared the task Jinette took upon himself of examining the remains. The owner's agitation was growing in the seconds that passed and from his jaws white foam splattered outward with each scream. Van Helsing felt his skin prickle as from all about the room, an undertone of the yelps and barks that had greeted his first arrival began to swell.

"Are you almost done?" He directed the question over his shoulder as his eyes darted from one area of darkness to the next. The rosary's glow extended for no more than, perhaps, twenty feet. Beyond that, the light faded quickly from a murky grey to the purest black. It occurred to the hunter that in that darkness, a great many things were hidden, not only from himself but from the monks as well. They were no more suited to absolute darkness than he, even less so. How, then, did they find the pitiful victims of their hunger to begin with?

His eyes narrowed as he looked at the creature across from him—the former monk had now worked himself up to frenzy. He tore at his robes, his long dirty fingernails lacerating his own skin as his screams became high-pitched yelps of pain and fury. And from all around them, the swelling sound of giggling closed in.

Van Helsing was moving before he realized what he was doing—he lunged at the screaming monk, catching him about the waist and bearing them both to the ground. The rosary was wound about his hand and it now illuminated a ring of creatures, their jaws dripping with hunger, their eyes fixed on the monk that even now struggled with Van Helsing, jaws snapping at his throat. The hunter rolled with the man in his arms, attempting to force him down; the monk fought like a wild animal, heedless of the damage he himself sustained as he tried to both escape and to injure Van Helsing. His yellow teeth snapped repeatedly at the hunter's throat, the blood that flowed from the injuries that he inflicted upon them both made holding the monk increasingly difficult.

In the seconds that had elapsed, they rolled across the dirty floor, further away from Jinette, and Van Helsing found himself on the bottom with the monk's hands about his throat as he attempted to hold the drooling jaws from his face. All about them, the giggling had risen to shrieks and the monks pressed in.

The monk on top of him was abruptly knocked off and sent rolling into the darkness from which truly horrific screams began. Dirty, stained hands seized Van Helsing from all sides, pawing at his face, his clothing. A scream was wrenched from him as teeth sank into his thigh and he swung with all his strength, breaking the gnawing jaws and thrusting the bloody face back into the darkness.

Suddenly the darkness retreated as blinding white light poured over them, driving the gibbering monks back with it. Jinette approached, the shining rosary that hung from his belt was swinging so that the shadows danced, receding and rushing back, disclosing the close of monks waiting just beyond the edge of darkness.

Van Helsing sat up, and then accepted Jinette's hand to help him rise. With his regaining his footing, the press of monks retreated further and the giggling died down to a waiting, watchful silence.

The two men drew back to the narrow aperture they had been investigating, now grimly certain that its owner would no longer object.

"Why didn't the evil strike at the light?" Van Helsing asked, and then raised his eyebrow as Jinette produced a silver flask from a hidden pocket in his robe. "I'm guessing that's not altar wine?"

"If you feel the need for communion, I'm sure it would do in a pinch," Jinette said reprovingly. "I thought, rather, that you would like me to attend to your leg before the good brother's bite begins an infection." Jinette urged Van Helsing to set his foot upon the raised pile of rubble and tattered bedding, presenting the bloody teeth marks to the light.

"Hmph. If the 'good brother's' teeth were anything like his fellows', I'm not sure a little wine is going to help," Van Helsing growled. "Still, I won't turn down a drink—hand it over."

The smirk on Jinette's face held both humor and gratitude for the opportunity to indulge it as he upended the flask over Van Helsing's thigh, instead. The hunter's anguished hiss and gritting teeth served only to broaden the Cardinal's smile.

"With my blessings," Jinette murmured, patting Van Helsing's leg before he bound a strip of cloth torn from his robe about it.

To take his mind off the throbbing pain in his leg, Van Helsing glared at the prelate as he spoke through gritting teeth. "If Carl was hurt badly enough, they would have attacked him. They attack at any sign of weakness or agitation and they don't appear to recognize or care about one another, let alone an injured stranger. They'd attack anyone that couldn't defend himself. Did you hear anything—fighting or that God-awful giggling after I appeared?"

Jinette considered the hunter's words as he tended the man's injury before shaking his head. "No. It was very quiet."

"Then where _is_ Carl?" Van Helsing snapped, looking about them and feeling rage boil within him at the thick darkness that hid so much of the long chamber.

Jinette didn't reply to the obviously rhetorical question, but his smile had fled to be replaced with a deep sadness that lined his face.

* * *

"But where _are_ we?" Carl asked again as he clung to Brother Michael's robe and followed him into the opaque darkness. 

The blind brother didn't answer Carl's query, any more than he had any of the other equally bewildered questions Carl had put to him after their initial meeting. Instead, he led Carl deeper into the gloom at a rapid pace.

Whenever the opportunity presented itself on their unexpected journey, Carl had taken to extending a hand and feeling about. He'd quickly discovered that they were in a very narrow hallway, lined with gritty cold stone that rasped over his dragging fingertips. Beneath his feet, he was surprised to find their way clear of debris, though the relief of a clear path was mitigated by the choking clouds of dust that rose with each step. Very quickly he had learnt to pull the neck of his robe up and to breathe through the cloth. He wished with all his heart that he had his rosary back, though the thought of the light dimming and then fading just before he threw the beads at Van Helsing evoked a terrible feeling of pain and loss within his heart. He had doubted and refuted his faith—had God then turned from him as well? It appeared so.

In its place, the never-ending grinding presence of evil pressed at him, making it hard to think, to breathe, to even remember what it was like to be able to see and experience joy. He'd long since cried himself dry, his shameful sobs held silently trapped in his aching throat. Carl was not the most devout of men, he would be the first to admit that. If asked, he was more likely to define himself as an inventor rather than a holy man, even though he wore the robes of a mendicant friar every day of his life. Still, he had always taken silent comfort in his faith, even holding long silent conversations with God during the hours he spent alone at his table working on inventions. He imagined that God was listening and even enjoyed these times together. Now, he felt as if he had not only lost his faith, but also a life-long friend.

In return, his life was this darkness and the silent monk that led him deeper into it.

Grimly, Carl set his jaw and planted his feet as he clenched his hand about the tail of Michael's robe. The monk carried on walking, unaware for two steps, only to be brought up short as the slack material between he and Carl grew taut. Stubbornly, he persisted in attempting to walk and equally stubborn, Carl grabbed the monk's robe with two hands and held on.

"Walky walky!" The blind monk's first words in what seemed forever made Carl want to babble with relief.

"Yesyes, walky walky. But first talky…I mean, I need to talk. Where are we? Where is this place?"

He heard Michael's huff of displeasure and ill-temper but the monk answered him. "Inside the walls of Tintern. Along the ways only Old Michael knows. Useless, bat-blind Michael I may be, but it's the monkies that are blind and trapped now."

"Inside the walls?" Carl breathed, immediately feeling claustrophobia bear down upon him from all sides. He heard his breathing get louder and faster and felt his heart pound as he imagined tons of stone enclosing them, smothering them beneath its weight.

A hard, blunt finger abruptly poked him in the stomach with enough force to make Carl wheeze and then cough as he sucked in a lungful of stone dust. Through his hacking and wheezing, he heard Michael's smirking observation.

"You get funny thoughts, I'll take your mind off 'em!"

"Murder is a sin…murder is a sin," Carl's conscience sternly reminded him as he wiped his tearing eyes and imagined his hands fastened about Michael's scrawny neck. It took some effort to force himself to relinquish the image—just how much it took made him feel queasy and horrified with himself.

"Come on," Michael ordered and set off again, leaving Carl to grab blindly for a handful of his robe so that he could follow.

"My…my friends," Carl gasped into the folds of his own robe as he tried to pull in a breath of air that wasn't loaded with dust. "Where are they? Can you take me to them?"

It appeared, though, that Michael had exhausted his store of words for the moment and once again he could not be drawn out to speak, no matter how Carl pleaded with and then ranted at him.

Their path was taking them upward now, up a rough hewn set of unexpected steps. Memory of the stairwell that they had seen earlier, leading up to the second floor made Carl's legs freeze in their tracks as he shakily demanded answers.

His insistence, instead of drawing Michael out again, seemed to enrage the old man. With a snarl, he struck Carl's hand away, thrusting the friar back into the darkness.

Carl gasped with horror, flailing about and stumbled several steps forward, searching for the monk only to find empty air.

"Michael! Where are you? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you! Please, come back!"

Silence was his only answer for moments on end. And then,

"Monkie monkie… You want to order Michael around now?"

"Nonono!" Carl adamantly protested as he stumbled toward the voice. A giggle made him abruptly stop, his arms encircling his ribs as he stared into the suddenly threatening darkness.

"_All_ trapped, now."

The breathy whisper raised the hair on Carl's arms and neck. He swallowed hard as he dug his fingernails into his arms and tried to concentrate his mind on the pain rather than the fear that chilled the skin beneath his hands.

TBC


	11. Chapter 11

Rating: PG13  
Pairing: Carl/Gabriel, not a slash pairing, but a deep friendship  
Series/Sequel: A new story

**Summary: The final chapter**

Warning: Aspersions against the Church of Van Helsing's time (which I feel are merited); some violent concepts though not graphic

Disclaimer: I don't own anything (sniff), but I do like to play

**Feedback**: It's here at last, the final chapter. Please accept my apologies for how long it's taken to complete this chapter. I know that you understand that life occasionally demands more of our time and takes away those moments we would normally divert toward writing. It's been a great privilege to write this story and a real pleasure to read your comments. I feel very honored that you took the time to read it and I hope that this last chapter meets with your approval as well.

To those people who gave me feedback, I add an additional thanks. You are truly wonderful people and I've been blessed to be able to know you. Very big hugs and my most grateful thanks to:

**_The Cupboard and the Phantom, Lass, Ashti, Countess Verona Dracula, Gnome, NeyNya, Luthien, Indy, Eris86, Chibi-Kaz, Curious Dream Weaver, Silver Wolfess/Silver Shadow, SeaDragon 68, Jania, L-DHenson, Toto From Kansas, Woman of Rohan, Eris, Toto3, Nikki, HughJackman Fan, Nikoru Sanzo, Iblis and Runts Gal._**

_Special thanks to my muse Archangel Gabriel, the patron saint of the written word._

_---------------------------------_

"_Itsy bitsy spiders…crawled up the water spout…. Down came the rain and washed the spiders out. Out came the sun and dried the water up…. Now, my little spiders, now your troubles have really begun!"_

_In a perpetual blaze of thousands of burning candles, long, pale fingers, bent and broken and swathed in filthy bandages danced and flirted with the wavering light while caressing the worn, befouled leather cover of a large book lying upon a linen-draped altar. Down at the base of the altar, sprawled and desecrated upon the floor, lay the massive bible that had once graced the same spot. The mighty have fallen…long live the new king!_

"_And now, for a little housecleaning…we've got vermin that need to be dealt with. What's the best way to clean out a nest of spiders? If we are too rough, our dark Garden in the cellar will suffer—yesss, we're proud of our Garden. We've nurtured the brothers very carefully. Still…perhaps a little abject lesson wouldn't be amiss? Spare the rod, spoil the child after all!_

_As a murmuring chant began, the leather cover of the large book was torn back to bare a cracked yellow page to the flickering light. Upon the parchment, crimson letters bled together and began to swirl, creating a pulsing vortex. The chant, at first a barely audible hissing, now ascended, growing louder as the pale hands were pressed hard onto the revealed page. From deep within Tintern's foundations a grinding noise began followed by the rush of tons of water. Over it all, the chanter's voice abruptly became falsetto shrieks as from the vortex, dark mouths lined with teeth opened and began to feed upon the hands._

* * *

Bogey Man – Chapter 11

The stones of the Cloister rocked against one another, grinding and shuddering. Carl, alone in the dark passage, whirled about flinging his arms out to brace against the wall only to snatch them away as he felt the cold undulating movement beneath his palms. His palms felt slick and oily and he felt his lips curl in a rictus of disgust. Ectoplasm…the walls were flowing with it. Something monumental was about to happen and he was trapped like a bug.

Abruptly he heard a high whistling noise and instinctively threw himself back against the stairs, thus narrowly missing a falling stone the size of his head. More rocks were falling, he could hear them striking each other, bouncing off the walls to hit the ground all around him. Unthinkingly, Carl covered his head with his arms and darted up the stairs, throwing himself hard from one side to the other in order to avoid the stony rain falling all about him.

"Got to get out ….got to get out…..ohGodohGodohGod…." Carl panted. He was terrified of small enclosed places that he couldn't get out off. His greatest fear was being buried alive—he'd awoken upon occasion shouting and soaked with sweat after dreaming of being sealed within a coffin and buried while he screamed to be let out. He'd heard the thud of the earth upon the lid of his plain cheap casket, smelled the thick damp mould as it trickled through the loose joints and strained his ears, waiting…waiting ….waiting for the inevitable moment, when he would hear nothing. And then he would scream and scream into the darkness, until the lack of air choked him into silent death.

"Nononononono!" Carl shrieked and thrust himself forward, up the stairs, at times on all fours, but he never stopped moving. His hands tore upon the rough steps and his body was bruised and battered from falling rocks and from being tossed about with each new quake. From his lips a continuous flow of pleas and exhortations to God emerged in a single long sentence of which he was hardly aware. He was fighting his way up out of the earth, toward the light, and nothing would stop him.

Darkness smothered his face, his eyes ached with staring outwards at nothing and then--glorious wondrous light! Bright, so bright he almost had to shut his eyes against it, but he couldn't bear the thought of shutting that incredible incandescence out after having tried for so long to reach it. So with tortured eyes from which tears of pain and gratitude flowed, he looked his fill of the swirling, flickering yellow, orange, red and blue lights and thanked God for them.

Behind him, emerging like a shadow from the walls, a dark figure laid bleeding savaged hands upon Carl's shoulders. Carl's breath caught in a hard gasp as the figure drew close, leaning over his shoulder to place its cold cheek to his and murmured, "Welcome to Hell, my son."

* * *

The monks knew before the first stone fell; before the first shudder coursed through the cold walls and knocked chips from the mortar and granite, all activity stopped and hung in breathless stillness for an instant. And then the horrifying keening wail started as the stones shuddered and quaked. Van Helsing seized Jinette's arm, pulling the Cardinal close as the monks broke from their dark bolt holes and surged over the two men. Not even the rosaries' light could equal the terror they evinced as Tintern groaned about them.

"What's happening?" Jinette shouted over the noise, but Van Helsing was too busy trying to keep his footing in the crowding shoving melee to answer. The monks were like maddened animals in a pointless stampede from wall to wall; they ran over one another, crushing and climbing over the bodies in a vain attempt to escape their terror.

The hunter held tight to Jinette and forced his way through the crush back toward the stone bench and the way to the floor above. "We have to get out of here," he shouted into the other man's ear.

"Why? What's happening?" Jinette refused to climb up onto the bench, instead turning back to the monks despite Van Helsing's angry insistence. "They're killing one another! We have to..."

"There's no time!" The hunter seized the front of the Cardinal's robes and dragged him up so that they were nose to nose. "I can hear it. The sound of water, coming fast. Now climb!"

Jinette was thrust at the stone bench even as Van Helsing shoved a hand under his posterior and boosted him upwards. Despite himself, Jinette found himself shoved rapidly towards the yawning hole. With no recourse, he capitulated and began to climb, pulling himself upward with winded groans as fast as he was able while Van Helsing pushed at him from below.

The hunter's attention was only partly on the climbing man–he watched the monks, praying that their blind panic would absorb them for a few more seconds. Jinette was almost free, that was all that he could hope for. Even as the Cardinal pulled himself the last few feet upward, the monks finally became aware of the only true escape from their cell. They rushed the bench, tearing blindly at each other and at Van Helsing with such ferocity that no one was able to take advantage of the escape route.

The ground shuddered beneath them as a massive wave of black liquid surged out of the darkness and covered them, washing the bench, the monks and Van Helsing from sight.

Jinette crouched on the floor above, lurched forward over the hole, watching with a feeling of horrified awe as the dark flood tore through the underground vault, carrying everything with it until all was submerged. Where once the hole had opened over a good twelve feet drop to the floor below, now there was only the silent lapping water.

Setting his jaw, Jinette yanked the rosary from his belt; winding it several times about his fist, he dropped down onto his face over the hole and shoved his hand into the foaming dark water up to the shoulder. He gasped at the frigidity of the water, it was as if he'd thrust his arm into a frozen lake. His fingers were rapidly losing any feeling and he was very afraid that he would drop the rosary without even being aware of it. He clenched his fist, as hard as he could about the beads and dragged his arm in a tight arc within the water, hoping that the moving light of the rosary would be visible to Van Helsing beneath the surface.

It never occurred to Jinette that the hunter might have drowned; the possibility of the man he knew who had come through so much in the past now dying like a rat in a flooded cellar wasn't even remotely feasible to the Cardinal. Jinette held his breath and continued to scythe the rosary through the water. The Cloister was quiet now, with only the sound of the bubbles popping in the foaming water to break the silence. It was several moments before at last he was forced to pull his numb hand free or risk dropping the beads. When his arm emerged, it was almost blue but the beads were still clutched within his deathlike grip. It took precious seconds to pry them loose, wind them securely about his other hand and then plunge that hand back into the water.

He now prayed aloud as he waited. His other hand was thawing out and the pain of it was enough to make his eyes stream and his words emerge more as groans of agony, but he still prayed.

When unseen icy fingers seized his wrist, Jinette screamed, partly from shock and partly from fright. The weight on his arm was horrifyingly heavy, almost dragging him headfirst into the dark water. He groaned as he braced himself and slowly began to pull the dead weight upwards toward the surface. As he heaved and panted, struggling to get better leverage, each passing second seemed like hours. His goose pimpled flesh was now running with sweat and his arm felt as though it were being ripped from the socket. He was running out of strength but he could see the dark shadow beneath drawing close. He was almost there; setting his teeth in a hard snarl, he heaved upwards.

The water belched outward, washing the dirty stones as a figure emerged from the flood and flopped onto the floor. Jinette's mouth fell open as, still clinging to his wrist, the figure rolled over to reveal the wide-open blue mouth and protruding red eyes of one of the monks. Black water gouted from the monk's open mouth as he vomited it up. Jinette, sitting on the wet stones, shook himself from his staring stupor and pushed back with his heels, dragging both himself and the monk free of the slopping water and the hole.

The monk clung to him with incredible strength; when he'd pulled the man to a safe distance from the hole, Jinette had to fight to free himself, despairing as he wasted more time that Van Helsing would need. Though still gagging and gasping, the monk set up a watery wail and curled about Jinette's wrist, refusing to let go. In desperation, Jinette began to strike the monk about the head and shoulders while yanking at his imprisoned hand until at last he succeeded in pulling free. Immediately, the monk scrabbled up onto his hands and knees and then tottered to his feet. Stumbling and falling, the monk ran from Jinette, all the while continuing his mindless wailing until the dark shadows swallowed him.

Jinette slumped down onto the floor over the hole, blinking down at the dark surface of the water below before closing his eyes and releasing the breath he seemed to have been holding for ages. He had failed. He judged a good twenty minutes had passed since Van Helsing had disappeared beneath the wave of water. Whatever possible chance he might have had to rescue the hunter had been lost while he grappled with the poor mad monk. He'd lost the hunter, and he'd lost Carl.

Some odd part of Jinette's mind pointed out the irony of the fact that the two men who had experience in dealing with monsters and extreme situations were now dead, while he, a desk-bound politician, was left to deal with the monster still waiting on the second floor. What chance did he have? Jinette shook his head as he admitted his chances were at least better than Van Helsing's and Carl's.

With an effort, Jinette rose to his feet, having to brace himself against a dusty wall as he gathered his strength. There was nothing left to keep him from ascending the stairway to the second floor now. The monks were gone and the demon that awaited him above certainly knew that he was coming, so there was no need for subtlety. He felt as if his strength was gone, all that kept him on his feet was stubbornness. The corner of his mouth crooked involuntarily upwards as it occurred to him that Van Helsing would no doubt have enjoyed sassing him about that–possibly saying he wished the monster better luck against Jinette's stubbornness than the hunter had ever had.

Blinking rapidly, Jinette shook his head. He would have time later to indulge in regrets. He still had a job to complete.

* * *

Carl shuddered as he stared straight ahead at the flickering candles. He could feel the hard grip on his shoulders, feel the icy cold touch of flesh against his cheek and smelled the graveyard odor of the breath of the demon that held him. He wanted to look away, to break away, but he couldn't force himself to move. Instead, he could only listen as the hissing whisper filled his mind.

The light of the candles began to dim as his breath sped up and a cold sweat trickled down his forehead and into his eyes stinging them. The mocking flames drew him inwards to reveal a dark heart devoid of light. From all about him he heard rhythmic thumps and his throat bobbled as a cry struggled to emerge. It was close and dark and so very cold now. He knew where he was, he felt the tears that rolled from his eyes mix with the dust on his cheeks to make muddy tracks.

_In the remaining dim light, he could barely make out his hands as he raised them and pressed them hard against the lid of the coffin. He pushed up, hard, and was rewarded with the sound of cracking wood. His breath was now shallow pants which emerged in a breathless keening. Again he pushed, harder, digging his fingernails into the cracked wood and welcoming the long splinters that were driven into his flesh and beneath his nails. It was hard to breath now; frantically he clawed at wood and then cold earth, shoving his way upwards, burrowing like a worm through the mould toward daylight. He was so very frightened but he used the panic to fuel his muscles and kept clawing, kept pushing upwards._

_He felt the crust of earth break over his hand and his fingers emerged into open stillness. With his eyes and mouth filled with dirt, he couldn't see the light, couldn't shout for help. He thrust his arm upwards with the last of his strength—and felt the cold wood of a closed lid._

_The black earth took his mindless screams and sealed them fast within its depths._

* * *

As Jinette approached the darkened stairs leading to the second floor, he felt an unaccustomed anger within him, heating his guts and filling his mind with grim resolution. Tintern had seen so much death, so much pain—every breath he took reeked of it and fueled his anger. The Order had been created to protect mankind; thousands had died in this pursuit. And that history had been subverted and corrupted to this pestilence. All was destroyed—very well, he would finish the job. Tintern was a polluted hell hole that blackened everything it touched. It was time and past that an end was put to it.

The wooden steps creaking beneath his feet filled his mind and he counted each one with satisfaction. He knew how to stop Tintern. It was so easy. Carl had pointed the way while they were still outside the stone walls, but he hadn't paid attention then. Now, he put Carl's words in their proper context and he had the answer.

The stairs ended at a closed wooden door. He started to raise the rosary, still wrapped about his white fingers to blast it open, and then paused, one eyebrow rising as his head tilted thoughtfully to the side. He watched himself reach out and touch the iron latch, gently depressing it, and grunted mirthlessly as the door swung open easily.

"Welcome to my parlor," he murmured. "I think that you will choke on this fly."

The upper story of Tintern had creaking wooden floors that were white with dust and fallen stones. The stone walls gleamed in the light and he ran a finger over them, noting the slick oozing wetness that coated them.

"You waste your power in displays," he murmured. "You make a loud noise, but I think it's the shouting of an empty bully."

No bursts of power answered him, no stones fell and no tidal wave crashed over him. The dark hall remained silent and calm. Jinette frowned at this seeming docility but continued onward.

The hall was punctuated with doorways, each had been broken open leaving doors and hinges cracked and warped beyond repair. Each cell within was destroyed, dripping with wreaths of ectoplasm that gleamed in the light of the opened windows. He looked beyond, to the dark night outside, and found it comforted him. It felt as if he'd been within Tintern's walls for years rather than hours. He could hear rainfall and see lightening rippling within the thick clouds--Van Helsing's storm had manifested as expected.

He passed the rooms without going in, his gaze intent upon the end of the hall and the only remaining closed door. The hall spanned the entire length of the Abbey, and he noted that it seemed to stretch and expand before him to twice and three times its length. It felt as if he were walking in place and with each step his anger grew until finally he stopped. Raising his arm, he thrust the rosary at the far doorway, shouting into the stillness,

"Demon! In the name of God, desist!"

In the instant that it takes to blink, suddenly the hallway contracted with an explosive retort and Jinette staggered as he abruptly found himself in front of the closed door. The reddish wooden plank creaked as it bowed slightly, and then retracted as if in shallow breaths. There was expectancy in the air, he felt as if the door was watching him.

"Don't worry," he assured it grimly as he reached for the latch, "I'm coming."

The door swung open on squealing hinges and Jinette stepped into a familiar room.

_Cardinal Jinette sat quietly, thoughtfully pensive in the large red leather chair behind his magnificent desk. The richly appointed room with its thick soft carpets and its superb furnishings were fitting backdrops for the shelves of leather-bound books that graced an entire wall. Everything was dusted, cleaned, oiled, and maintained to perfection. Everything was in its place and accounted for. Of course, such perfection always has a price._

_The Cardinal now acknowledged he was paying such a price in his solitary ruminations. No one wanted to spend a great deal of time in this room, nor with the man that sat at the desk. He could hardly blame them, he didn't want to spend any time here either and he often found his own company far too sober._

_He'd taken a chance, long ago, and tried to break out of the strait jacket his office had come to represent, but he'd failed. It was a long time ago, he remembered there had been deaths but beyond that he couldn't recall any single fact about his failed attempt at a mission._

_Now, Jinette was a white haired old man with trembling hands and rheumy eyes who never left his office. He sat all day, surrounded by paper, and played little games with a length of rope. He fussed with it for hours until he had it just the way he wanted it, until he was absolutely sure it was perfect. When he was ready, he carried it to the darkest corner of his office—it had to be the darkest, there was a subtle rightness to that irony. He tossed the rope up over the beam and tied it off tight, so that it wouldn't give way. Then, chuckling to himself, he stepped up onto the footstool he placed beneath it and fitted the looped end of the rope about his neck._

_He'd often wondered how long it would take for the Order to realize he was missing, that he hadn't been seen for far too long. He sent men out to die all the time, often without even seeing their faces one last time. It seemed right that he embark now on his own journey alone._

_With a kick, he toppled the stool and cried out once before the rope grew too tight about his neck to allow sound to emerge. He kicked out, dancing death's waltz in midair as his eyes grew dark and his tongue lolled upon his chin. He heard his heartbeat thunder in his ears as the agony within his starved lungs became unendurable._

_Jinette swung, twitching from the long rope in his dark rich office, and waited. He hoped he wouldn't have to wait too long before someone came._

* * *

The abbot cackled to himself as he looked at the two men, each immersed within his own hell. He watched their agony, drinking it in. With a gliding motion, he slid down next to Carl and took the friar's face within his hands, turning it so that he could look full into the unfocused blue eyes. He could see the terror in them and he chuckled at the pitiful mewling noises the friar made. Carl's hands were pressed flat against the wooden floor, pushing at the immovable barrier with all of his might, his bloody nails scrabbling for a release from his inner hell.

The abbot leaned in closer eagerly, not wanting to miss an instant of Carl's suffering. "So frightened, little friar. Like a little child begging for mercy. Shall I show you that the bad can always be worse? So that you will learn, as the monks did, to accept the hell you are in and to be grateful for it? Yes, yes, my dear, it's for your own good."

Carl's eyes abruptly dilated and his breathing hitched sharply. His hands on the floor were suddenly torn away as the friar fell back and began to beat at himself and to writhe upon the floor. His breath tore loose as he began to scream a single word in a high falsetto shriek over and over again.

"Firefirefirefirefire!"

A hard heavy hand fell on the abbot's shoulder, abruptly jerking him upward only to slam him against a wall so hard the plaster cracked. In the next instant, a closed fist slammed into the dark cowl once, twice and then three times before the dark figure was released to slide to the floor.

Van Helsing stood over the fallen figure, his hair and clothing dripping black water, his face pale and set in hard implacable lines of anger. His hand rose to sketch a rough cross over the fallen figure as he muttered in hard angry tones the blessing of passing.

Behind him, standing with hunched shoulders and hands clutched at his chest, Michael tilted his head left and right, listening to the sounds of events he could not see. His hair and clothing were as wet as Van Helsing's and he resembled nothing so much as an aged half-drowned rat wrapped in soggy brown paper. His thin body shuddered with excitement at the sounds of mayhem and when he heard the meaty thud of a fist impacting and the sounds of crunching bones and cartilage, he began to rock forwards and back while a high giddy cackle emerged from his gaping mouth. When Van Helsing allowed the dark figure to fall, Michael craned his sightless face forward with a petulant frown.

"Hit him again! Bad Monkie! Bad!"

When the abbot slid downward, the tall altar at the end of the room shuddered as the pages of the book lying upon it began to turn, faster and faster. Van Helsing went to the altar, his hands hovering uncertainly over the pages as he realized he had no idea what to do. The rack of candles along the wall flared brightly and he winced as paraffin wax spluttered and popped, spraying everything in range. Grimly, he set his jaw and reached for the book.

"No! Don't touch it!"

Jinette's hands fell on Van Helsing's shoulders, pulling him back. As he did so, the pages abruptly stopped turning to reveal a page covered in red writing and arcane symbols. As they watched, the writing began to move, to spin, faster and faster. Both men leaned forward, their brows dropping as into incredulous frowns as the page became a swirling vortex through which something was risingtoward them.

"Get back," Van Helsing shouted and pushed Jinette away; he fell back as well as a large red hand thrust up from the book, it's long skeletal fingers snatching at them. It rose from the book to reveal an arm from which skin hung in shreds to reveal the bone and wet muscles below.

The altar was shuddering; a long crack appeared with the retort of a gun shot, splitting the altar and spilling the book onto the floor. It fell face down and lay quietly for several seconds. Then suddenly, from underneath, the hand reappeared, clutching stone floor with scratching nails.

Jinette and Van Helsing had fallen back to Carl who was being helped up by Michael. The friar's pale face was blank of expression, his eyes unseeing but filled with fear. He'd had a temporary reprieve from the nightmare the abbot had created for him, but he was still in a state of limbo within his mind.

Van Helsing touched Carl's cheek, frowning as the friar made no sign of recognition. He allowed his hand to drop then and turned to the book upon the floor. Striding to it, he leaned down and seized the leather cover, lifted the book, and attempted to close it.

The instant the book was free of the floor, the hand that emerged from it flailed about, reaching backward at the hunter who narrowly ducked out of the way. The candles on the wall flared again and the candles exploded showering the room with burning paraffin.

Jinette had thrown himself over Carl and Michael, attempting to protect them from the burning rain. Now he looked up from where they lay on the floor to see Van Helsing, in the small light remaining, fighting to contain a figure emerging from the book. It was the size of a child, blood red and covered with dripping ectoplasm. From its grossly exaggerated jaw, huge fangs jutted outward, snapping at Van Helsing as he attempted to force it back into the book.

Jinette immediately went to the hunter, his lips drawing back in a snarl of disgust as he laid hands on the foul demon and joined the hunter in pushing it back into the vortex. From the darkness of the vortex they saw eyes appear, seemingly thousands, all of them rushing upwards, towards the light.

The demon's high pitched screams continued, even as they thrust it back into the vortex. Van Helsing seized the covers of the book and attempted to close it but they wouldn't close. Like stone, they were immovable. From the pages, fingers emerged on all sides.

"I can't hold them all!" Van Helsing shouted. "Take Carl and Michael—get them out of here!"

"Yes, I will!" Jinette promised, and then caught at Van Helsing's hands, clasping one of them in a hard grip. "They seek the light—then we should give it to them!"

The hunter barely had time to register something hard and angular pressed into his palm before Jinette released his hand and fell back towards Carl. He hauled the friar up with the monk's help and the three men stumbled from the room, leaving Van Helsing and the book behind.

Van Helsing was loosing his battle with the book. As more hands emerged, he was unable to hold it any longer and allowed the thick tome to fall to the floor to lie open. He could see into the vortex, could see the hungry eyes of thousands of demons. They were no longer contained; they would swarm out over the world now, unless he could somehow stop them.

He reached for the book again, then hesitated, instead raising his clenched hand up to open his palm. His eyebrows climbed as he looked at what Jinette had given him.

And then he smiled. Looking into the oncoming eyes of the demon horde, he held his hand over the book—and then opened it.

Shining like a falling star, the crucifix plunged toward the open page, and into it. And from out of the book came an enormous explosion of light.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jinette and Michael, with Carl between them, staggered, falling heavily against the walls of the stairway as Tintern shook. They could hear the sound of stones falling and timbers giving way. Tintern was falling to pieces about their ears.

Panting and coughing, the two men dragged Carl between then as they fought their way through the debris and dodged falling rubble.

"Trapped, trapped like vermin, like little brown mice...," Michael wheezed only to yelp as Jinette swatted the back of his head.

"Less talk, more running!" the Cardinal growled.

Carl's head bobbled up and down on his chest as they rushed him along, his blue eyes darted everywhere and still he didn't make a sound. But his feet began to move in awkward running motions and his guardians groaned in relief as they let him take some of his own weight.

The darkness was now punctuated with gaping holes in the floor above that allowed the light of the coming dawn inside. Oddly, after so long in Tintern's darkness, the sight of the dawn's light didn't bring the comfort it might have once upon a time. They had been changed by the Abbey, willing or not, and they had learned to draw comfort from the shadows.

Comforting or not, though, they couldn't afford to linger—Tintern was falling, the thunderous echoes made their heads reel and filled the air with choking dust. They were literally forced out of the Abbey's door, which collapsed with an almost human shriek behind them.

Jinette and Michael managed to run with Carl far enough to clear Tintern's abandoned garden and to reach the tall weeds of the plateau before collapsing. They fell to the ground in a heap and lay gasping and coughing, completely unable and unwilling to care any longer about anything. They'd escaped by sheer luck and they had the scars, both external and internal, to prove it.

It was some time later when Jinette at last stirred himself to rise to a sitting position. His first thought was for Carl.

The friar still lay upon the ground, his eyes wide open, staring into open space. His fingers were curled into the dirt, scratching into it.

"Carl?" Jinette called as he shook the friar without success. "Carl, you must wake up." Reluctantly, Jinette hauled the friar upright and, once he was seated, shook him firmly by the shoulders. When that didn't work, he slapped Carl's cheeks, wincing as he did so.

"Don't you think he's had enough without that too?"

Jinette's eyes closed in heartfelt thankfulness as the hunter appeared through the tall weeds. Van Helsing was torn, battered, bloody, and undeniably irreverent. Jinette felt as though a great weight had rolled off his shoulders.

"I am certain he has been through a great deal—if you can do better, please do so."

Ignoring Jinette's huff, Van Helsing went to Carl, squatting down to pull the friar hard into his chest as he wrapped his arms about him. He was sopping wet from the dark water he had emerged from but he didn't figure the friar was in any state to object.

Carl shuddered hard, his breath still emerging as the breathless mewls of a badly frightened child. The hunter pushed away an icy feeling of dread as he settled down to sit on the ground and began to rock with the friar.

"It's alright, Carl. Nothing will hurt you any more. You're safe. It's all over."

Van Helsing felt his friend's shoulders hitch several times and then the friar's bloody fingers curled into his shoulders. Carl's nose was tucked firmly under Van Helsing's chin so that the hunter felt the friar's weary shuddering sigh on his skin.

"Carl?"

"I…I was trapped…," Carl's voice was a barely audible whisper that the hunter had to strain to hear. "In a coffin…underground. I was suffocating…couldn't get out. And..and..then…the coffin was on fire…."

"Carl," Van Helsing murmured and hugged the other man harder until Carl squeaked with the constriction and his shudders decreased markedly. "You're safe, Carl. There will be no more coffins for you."

The friar stirred, his head lifting so that he could meet Van Helsing's eyes. Within his gaze was the desperation of a child. "How…are you sure?"

The hunter smiled at his friend before dropping his head forward to rest his forehead against Carl's. "I'm sure. I'm a hunter who gets rid of wicked things that trap friars in coffins. I know about these things so you can rest assured."

A small puff of genuine laughter warmed Van Helsing's face as Carl recognized the parody of his own words said another time, when he had been the one comforting a friend.

"Yes, you would know, wouldn't you," he murmured and shifted to lay his forehead against the hunter's shoulder as he closed his eyes with relief. Almost immediately, his head popped back up as he frowned down at the shoulder he had just vacated. "You're all wet! What's happened? And what about the demon and the book!"

The hunter only shook his head as he straightened; squeezing the friar's shoulders before turning him to look out over what was left of the former Abbey.

Unlike its more famous ruined namesake, this Abbey had fared badly. Its collapse was almost utter, only one wall remained standing and it appeared none too stable. Despite its shattered state, the pile of rubble gave nothing away about itself—nothing to identify neither what it has been nor what part it might have played in history. In very little time, it would be consumed by the weeds and plants topping the plateau and be further downgraded by the winter rains. Eventually, it would become just another bit of rubble that was of no particular interest or concern to anyone.

Carl blinked, frowning slightly. At Van Helsing's half formed query, he held up a finger and lifted his face to the light breaking over the land. When he spoke, it was in a thoughtful whisper.

"I don't feel it any more."

"You have been through a great deal, Carl." Jinette said as he peered at Carl in confusion, concerned the friar's mind was still unhinged. "It would perhaps be best if you rested..."

Carl, though, was having none of that. Instead he rose unsteadily to his feet and took several steps towards Tintern, lifting his face and scenting the wind as though he were a prized pointer flushing out grouse.

Van Helsing joined him, watching his friend silently. When Carl turned excitedly to him, the hunter raised an eyebrow. "Well? "

"The feeling of evil. It's gone!" Carl marveled. "How is that possible?"

The hunter sighed as he patted Carl on the shoulder, and then looked back at Jinette who had risen and was helping Michael to his feet.

"That's something you probably want to take up with his Holiness," he said, shaking his head when Carl's blue gaze turned to him in surprise. "It seems it was a good thing he came along after all," Van Helsing admitted reluctantly.

"Hmph!" Jinette snorted as he began to pick his way through the weeds towards the tree belt. "Do not strain yourself with praise for me, Van Helsing. I am quite used to your irreverence."

The hunter's eyebrows rose as a smile tugged at his lips. He left Carl to follow the Cardinal, his deep voice fading with distance.

"So now that you've actually had some blood running through your veins, does that mean I can look forward to your help on the next mission?"

Carl didn't hear Jinette's answer. Just as well—Jinette might actually go on another mission, but Carl's field days were over. Period.

In the meantime—

"Hey! Who's going to help me with this...this...monk," Carl called, waving a disgusted hand at Michael.

"Cry cry crybaby!" the monk in question sneered.

"Don't you start!" Carl adjured him sternly. "You _left_ me in that God awful tunnel!"

"You wouldn't move!" Michael said haughtily as he crossed his arms over his filthy robe with the snotty air of a born aristocrat.

"I only asked a question, you hell cat!" Carl huffed. "One question, it certainly didn't merit being abandoned in the pitch dark! I should leave _you_ here; see how you like being stranded!"

Michael only shrugged and, tilting his head in the direction of Van Helsing and Jinette's departure, turned and proceed across the field, following the drifting sounds of the fading voices.

Carl stood alone in the field, open mouthed, for several seconds before setting off after the monk at a dead run.

"Wait for me!"

the end


End file.
